The 54th Massachusetts USCT was intentionally fired upon by Union Maine troops while assaulting Battery Wagner. The Federal Official Records and memoirs of the USCT document all of these war incidents.

Reporting on the assault on Battery Wagner] "Sergeant George E. Stephens of Company B described the scene to Captain Emilio: 

'Just at the very hottest moment of the struggle, a battalion or regiment charged up to the moat, halted, and did not attempt to join us, but from their position commenced to fire upon us. I was one of the men who shouted from where I stood, 'don’t fire on us. We are the Fifty-fourth.' I have heard it was a Maine Regiment.'" - "A Brave Black Regiment: History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry," Luis F. Emilio, Boston: Boston Book Company, 1894; Reprint, Salem: Ayer Company Publishers, Inc., 1990., 93