On Friday, July 10, 1863 Union troops landed on the south end of Morris Island near Charlestown, South Carolina. This constituted the first step of a siege that would last until September; Federal troops first had to subdue Fort Wagner, one of the main defenses protecting Charlestown Harbor, if Charlestown was to be taken.
A concerned Jefferson Davis, writing earlier to General Joseph Johnston, urged that the enemy “may yet be crushed and the late disaster be repaired by a concentration of all forces.”
But given the recent reverses suffered by his armies and their subsequent weaknesses and the sheer size of the Confederacy which they had to defend, it virtually was too late to reverse the fortunes of war. Yet Davis blindly continued to expect successes from his beleaguered generals.