It took weeks of men literally crawling through the sand, establishing slightly more forward positions each day, to finally take the battery. On August 26, federal troops captured the Confederate rifle pits in front of the battery, and two days later they found the place abandoned.

The defense of Battery Wagner had served its purpose, buying time for the defenders to increase the strength of their positions. The battery also became famous, in the North, as the place where African American troops proved their valor. In the South, the black assault on Battery Wagner had just the opposite result. Many white Southerners who had previously entertained rather low expectations of the blacks as soldiers now declared they would give no quarter to any that they encountered.