The main picket force ran in and gave the first notice to Lamar of the enemy’s rapid advance on his position. The garrison was aroused and at the guns and on the flanks just in time to meet the gallant assault of the Eighth Michigan, Seventh Connecticut, Seventy-ninth New York, Twenty-eighth Massachusetts, One Hundredth Pennsylvania and Forty-sixth New York, with Rockwell’s and Strahan’s light batteries and a company of engineers. The six regiments were moved forward in two lines, both under the immediate direction of Gen. I. I. Stevens, and each commanded by its senior colonel.
As they advanced the peninsula narrowed, and when
within short range of the works, the left regiment of the front line, the Seventh Connecticut, was crowded into the marsh. Just at this juncture Lamar fired the 8-inch columbiad charged with canister, and in rapid succession the 24’s and 18’s, and the mortar opened. The whole line wavered and was broken in some confusion. Urged on by their officers, the Connecticut, Michigan and New
York regiments pressed forward, the latter two in larger numbers gaining ground. Groups of men and officers of these two regiments gained the ditch and both flanks of the work, and some of them mounted the work. They were met by the galling fire of the infantry of Gaillard and Smith, and were either killed or captured. Meanwhile the 100 men under Jamison, sent to mount Bonneau’s guns, arrived and promptly took their places on the parapet, adding their rifles to the fire of the Charleston and Pee Dee battalions.
A number of the assaulting force, moving along the marsh under cover of the myrtle bushes, gained a lodgment on the right flank and in rear of the work, and were doing serious execution by their fire, hid as they were, and shielded by the bank of the peninsula. But they were soon dislodged by the rifles of the Fourth Louisiana battalion, sent by Colonel Hagood to reinforce the garrison as soon as he learned that the fort was being attacked.
