GILLMORE, Quincy Adams. Engineer and Artillery Operations Against Defences of Charleston Harbor in 1863.

...Comprising the Descent upon Morris Island, the Demolition of Fort Sumter, the Reduction of Forts Wagner and Gregg. With Observations on Heavy Ordnance, Fortifications, etc.

New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1865.

8vo.; tinted and hand-colored lithograph plates; three-quarter grained-sheep stamped in gilt; ribbed spine.

First edition. Sabin 27422.

Gillmore (1825-1888) graduated from the engineering course at West Point in 1849, where he also taught courses in harbor fortification and served as quartermaster until August 1861, when he was named Chief Engineer on the Port Royal expedition. In 1863 he was made Brigadier General and commanded Xth Corps during the siege of Charleston and its protecting forts, Wagner, Gregg, and Sumter. The struggle for this informal capital of the Confederacy was the bloody stage from which Colonel Robert Gould Shaw’s Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first Negro fighting contingent organized by the Union army, marched into the history books.

When Shaw and his men carried out their suicidal frontal assault against Fort Wagner, the casualties were extremely high. Half the troops who made the attack were killed, including Shaw, but the soldiers fought valiantly, some even reaching the parapet and holding it for a while before being driven off under punishing fire. The valor and ferocity of the attackers surprised their own white officers, as well as the newspaper correspondents who witnessed it. “Through the cannon smoke of that dark night,” wrote the Atlantic Monthly, “the manhood of the colored race shines before many eyes that would not see.” Lincoln used the example of the 54th to answer those who criticized him for turning the conflict into an abolitionist war: “You say you will not fight to free Negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union.” And when that work was done, Lincoln argued, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.”

General Gillmore, in this work, had a less exalted view of the 54th. He reprints his report of the battle, in which he noted the “compact and most destructive musketry fire” that rained down on the troops as they charged. “The leading regiment,” Gillmore continued, “was soon thrown into a state of disorder, which reacted disadvantageously upon, and delayed the progress of those which followed…. The behavior of the troops, under the circumstances, was unexceptionable, particularly that of the commanding officers.” It was Gillmore, however, who proved “unexceptionable” in July 1864, when he botched an assault against Petersburg, prompting Grant and Benjamin Butler to remove him from his command.