July 20, 1863

July 20, 1863

---Laure M. Towne, a Northern woman teaching freedmen in Federal-occupied Beaufort, South Carolina, writes of the news of the attack on Fort Wagner and its results:

[Diary] July 20.

I came home yesterday, and to-day I am summoned by Mr. Pierce to Beaufort to help nurse the wounded soldiers who have come down from Morris Island. They are coming in by hundreds. We hear the guns all day and night. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts behaved splendidly at the attack on Fort Wagner.1 They took it, but we cannot hold it, for Fort Sumter commands it and shells our men out. Our young Hallowell was wounded three times. Mr. Pierce nursed him and brought him down. Nearly all the officers of the Fifty-fourth killed or wounded. Colonel Shaw, they say, sprang upon the fort and called to his boys to come on, and was then struck and fell.