University of Virginia Library

An Infantry Assault and Repulse Followed.

Both these efforts were made during General Hagood's last tour of
duty in Wagner. Upon relieving Colonel Keitt, on the 21st, he discovered
after daylight that, in accordance with the practice established by the
colonel on his recent tour, but 19 men were left in the pits for the day,
instead of the heretofore usual number of seventy-five or eighty. They
could not be re-enforced until night, and the enemy were greatly nearer
them for attack than we were for support. To add to the general's anxiety,
a flag of truce came in during the day, and the bearer was imprudently
allowed to come near enough to observe the weakness of the force in the
pits. When, therefore, in the evening a heavy and continuous bombardment
of the pits and the space intervening between them and the fort commenced,
it was evident what was coming, and the general drew out four
companies (about 175 men) from the bomb-proofs and formed them behind
the breastheight of the land force ready to go out of the right sally port
by a flank when required. Having fully explained to the senior captain
his anxieties and anticipations, he took his place, sheltered as best he
could, to watch from the parapet the time to start this re-enforcement.

To start them too soon, before the fading light would obscure them, was
to send them to butchery under the fire of artillery that could be concentrated
on the intervening space; to send them too late was to lose the
pits, for the enemy, once in them, would be as hard from their construction
to drive out as the original occupants were. Deeming the time to have
arrived, the general gave the word, "Now, captain, go." "General, I wish
you would detail some other man to take this command. I don't feel
competent to it."

Fortunately, General Hagood saw just then Lieutenant-Colonel Dantzler,
of the Twentieth South Carolina, standing in the door of the bomb-proof
opening on the parade, and, beckoning to him, he came at double quick
under the shelling going on. Explaining hastily the situation, the general
put him in command, and, as he moved off, the assault commenced. Going
at a run, Dantzler reached the pits after three on the right had been captured.
The fight continued obstinately till 10 o'clock at night, when, forced
out of the captured pits, the enemy gave over his efforts. After putting
out his advanced videttes, who were required to crawl forward and lie on
their stomachs during the night some twenty paces in front of the pits,
the enemy's videttes in like position facing them some twenty paces
beyond, Dantzler was going on his hands and knees down the line, inspecting
them, when he discovered one post vacant. The heart of the occupant
had failed him and he had slunk back into the pits. Jerking him forward
into his place, with some harsh words, the attention of the opposite videttes
was attracted and his fire drawn. The bullet struck the colonel, as he
stood upon his hands and knees, in the breast of his coat and passed down
the length of his body between his clothing and skin and out over his hip
without other injury than a decided wheal. Poor Dantzler! Few braver
men shed their blood in this war. At Wauboteam Church, in Virginia, in
'64, he threw away his life in the effort, by a deed of "derring do," to make
something of a worthless regiment to which he had been promoted. And
the captain so inopportunely modest! In December, '64, on the lines before
Richmond, when, in the current slang of the soldiers, chaplains were
"played out," General Hagood was invited by the commanding officer of
one of his regiments to attend divine service to be conducted by one of his
line officers. After listening to an excellent sermon from an officer whom
he had noticed during the past campaign always at his post and doing
his duty well, his aide, Ben Martin, asked him if he remembered his first
interview with the preacher. It was the modest Battery Wagner captain!

In the second attack (on the 23th) upon the pits, a full force was in
them during the day from the Fifty-fourth Georgia, Captain Roberts commanding;
and they were re-enforced at dark by Colonel Devorne's Sixty-first
North Carolina. The fight was gallantly and obstinately maintained,
the enemy giving over without success about 9 p. m. Captain Roberts was
mortally wounded before sundown, but could not be brought into the fort
before dark. When the fort had been arranged for the night, the commanding
officer went into the hospital bomb-proof to enquire after him.
Having expressed the hope that he was not seriously wounded, he replied

that his injuries were mortal. Taking him by the hand his commander
spoke of his gallant bearing in the fight, when the brave fellow half rose
from his litter and said, "Thank you, general," and fell back exhausted. He
asked for a chaplain, but there was none in the fort—no

A layman, a member of Parker's Light Battery (the Marions), a section
of which was on duty in the fort, visited him at the request of the commanding
officer, and spent the time, until his removal to the city, in administering
to him the consolations of religion.

On the 18th of July, a Catholic clergyman was in the fort and administered
the rites of his church in the bomb-proof just before the troops were
drawn out to meet the assault. The chaplain of Ormstead's Georgia command
and Mr. Dickson, chaplain of the Twenty-fifth South Carolina, each
accompanied his regiment on its tour of duty in the fort. The writer heard
of no others.

Upon being relieved before day, on the 26th, by Colonel Harrison, General
Hagood called his attention specially to the critical condition of the rifle
pits. They were carried by an infantry assault that night. The special
circumstances the writer never learned. But the trouble was in re-enforcing
them at the right time; for a sufficient force could not with safety be
kept in them during the day, nor could they be re-enforced while there was
light, and, as before remarked, the enemy could mass for attack closer
than we were for support. Ripley's report says: "Just before dark the
enemy threw forward an overwhelming force on the advanced pickets and
succeeded in overpowering them before they could be supported."