Historic battleground protected in South Carolina

By: By BRUCE SMITH Associated Press Writer | SCNow
Published: July 20, 2008

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) _ Morris Island, made famous by the charge of the black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and once considered one of the nation's most endangered Civil War battlegrounds, has been protected from development.

The City of Charleston, working with the Trust for Public Land, purchased the property last month from developer Bobby Ginn in a $3 million deal. Now the city is working with the public on how to interpret and provide public access to the 800-acre island on Charleston Harbor.

The purchase capped an effort to protect the island which, in 2005, was named one of the nation's most-endangered battlefields by the Civil War Battlefield Trust.

Confederate Battery Wagner, where the Massachusetts troops died in a charge dramatized in the movie "Glory," has been washed away by the sea.

At one point, another developer proposed building 20 homes on the remaining high ground, part of which was the site of a Union battery that once lobbed shells into both Fort Sumter, where the opening shots of the war were fired, and Charleston.

Ginn bought the island to keep it from development and agreed to resell it to the Trust. Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said covenants on the city's purchase mean the land may never be developed.

"That's a huge achievement for our community, for our region and for our country," Riley said.

The city is working with the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission on a plan for the island.

The commission, which it appeared at one time would buy the land, earlier drew up a plan suggesting the undeveloped island remain much as it is.

"No decisions have been made," Riley said. "It's a very special place physically and its a very special place historically, so we have to be very careful."

On July 18, 1863, Union troops including the 54th Massachusetts, attacked Battery Wagner along a narrow strip of beach with the ocean on one side and the marsh on the other.

Historians say that of a federal force of 6,000, there were 1,600 casualties.

Also from the island, the Union fired the "Swamp Angel," a gun which lobbed a projectile 4.5 miles into Charleston.

The siege of Charleston lasted more than 19 months.