History of Pennsylvania volunteers, 1861-5; prepared in compliance with acts of the legislature, by Samuel P. Bates.

56 FIFTY-SECOND IEGIMENT. 1863
ance of the command for safety. The men inistantly sprang to arms, and soon
their bivouack was swept by his shells, and a brigade of his infantry rushed
forward to the assault. Captain Roc-kwel's Connecticut Battery, which had
fortunately arrived upon the island during the night, was soon brought into
position and opened with fine effect. A charge of the infantry sent the enemy
back to his intrenchments. A few shells from the eleven-inch Dahigrens of
the Pawnee helped to hasten the flight. The rebels suffered severely, but it
was manifest that General Terry could not hold the position with the force in
hand, and an evacuation was ordered. for the following night. The Fifty-second,
only two hundred and fifty strong, was sent upon the picket line in the afternoon to cover the withdrawal. The pickets on both sides were in open country,
in plain view, and in easy range of each other. The night proved rainy, and so
intensely dark, that an intelligent movement in any direction was impossible.
Finally, towards morning it was announced to the officers that the evacuation
was complete, and the pickets were withdrawn in safety. The movement attracted the attention of the enemy, who were left alone blazing away with their
muskets into the blank darkness. UTpon the next night, at dark, the Fifty-seeond had reached the head of Folly Island, and the men were spectators of the
desperate and bloody assault upon Fort Wagner. Sixteen hundred men were
left in front of its fatal trenches.
It was evident that the fort could only be reduced by the slow process of a
siege, and that, under the concentrated fire of Wagner and Sumter, and of innumerable batteries on James and Sullivan Islands, bristling with heavy rifled
cannons, columbiads, and mortars. Morris Island, upon the head of which Fort
Wagner was located, is a low neck of sand, five miles long, ending within one
thousand yards of Fort Sumuter. It varies in width from half a mile at its lower
extremity, to a hundred feet in front of Wagner, where it suddenly widens to
two hundred yards. At its narrowest point, Wagner extended quite across it,
a heavy sand fort with a wet ditch and bo0b-proof, capable of holding fourteen
hundred men. The sands of the island shift with every tide, and it is on no
two days of the same shape or size. The siege by which the fort was finally
reduced became a memorable one, and lasted fifty days.
" The barren ridges and hillocks of the island," says Colonel Hoyt, 4 furnished absolutely nothing but standing room, and even that was most unstable.
All supplies, timber excepted, were brought from the north in transports.
Folly Island was stripped of a thick and handsome growth of pine, for piles,
piers, and batteries. It is difficult to give any adequate notion of the energies
and activity displayed by the besieging forces. The first parallel was commenced one thousand four hundred yards from Wagner, and was a mere flying
sap up to the second parallel, eight hundred yards distant. At this point the
highest resources of the engineers' science were exhausted. Works of great
stre-gth were built, provided with magazines, depots, and bomb-proofs. It became of course the focus of the fie from all their lurid circumference. It
was found that Fort Sumter must first be reduced or silenced, as it threw
plunging shot into our works over the heads of the garrison of Wagner. By
the 17th of August General Gilmore was prepared to open upon Sumter with
the following' machinery: In the first parallel was a naval battery manned
by sailors from the fleet. It mounted two two-hundred-pounder Parrotts and
two eighty-four-pounder Whitworth guns, five eight-inch and five ten-inch siege
mortars, two thirty-pounder Parrotts and a i etqua Battery. These batteries