Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/218



N the 16th of July, Clingman s brigade, consisting of the following North Carolina regiments, the Eighth, Colonel Shaw; the Thirty-first, Lieut.-Col. C. W. Knight; the Fifty-first, Colonel McKethan; the Sixty-first, Colonel Radcliffe, Lieutenant- Colonel Devane and Major Harding, was ordered to South Carolina to assist in the defense of Charleston harbor. The brigade arrived on the 13th, and was at once assigned to duty. The Fifty-first and Thirty-first became members of the garrison at Fort Wagner. The Eighth and Sixty-first went to James island. At Battery Wagner the garrison endured many hardships, suffering a constant cannonade from land batteries and ironclads, and being exposed to an alert sharpshooter force at all hours. In addition, the water was bad, food insufficient, and the heat in the pits and bombproofs almost intolerable.

&quot;Battery Wagner was,&quot; says Lieutenant McKethan, &quot;a field work of sand, turf and palmetto logs, built across Morris island. From north to south it varied from twenty to seventy-five yards. Its bombproofs were capable of holding from 800 to 1,000 men.&quot; Its armament was far inferior in range to the guns of the Federals, and &quot;so we had to submit to the hail of iron sent upon us by the superior and larger range guns, from sunrise to sunset."