The Black Regiment that fought against racism

The Black Lives Matter movement has been radicalized again this week with attacks on historic monuments in several cities where colonial and slave symbols are being torn down. In the southern states, they have their work cut out for them because there are so many remnants commemorating the war exploits of the Confederate army, in statues and street and square names. And they will have an even harder time of it if they intend to forcibly remove, as they are tearing down sculptures, the Navy Jack crusader flags that thousands of Americans have placed at the entrance to their homes, most in comfortable brotherhood with the Star-Spangled Banner, as a symbol that rebellious, non-racist sentiment is still ingrained in many homes 155 years after the Civil War ended.

The anti-racist wave motivated by the death of George Floyd brings to light a century and a half later the most terrible stories of the American Civil War, but also the most sobering ones. It was a war between brothers that has always been associated with white people: those who fought to abolish slavery and those who defended it with their blood. But there were African-American soldiers involved in the contest. The 54th Massachusetts Regiment was the first U.S. Army contingent composed exclusively of black volunteers, commanded by a white officer, Colonel Robert G. Shaw. It was an experimental regiment, created by Governor John A. Andrew with the encouragement of President Abraham Lincoln to integrate black men into his ranks. They were free men established in the North and also slaves who had fled from the South American plantations. The battalion had much support and encouragement from the abolitionist families in the city of Boston, who favored its creation and the sending of its members to fight on the battlefields. 

186,107 Black soldiers fought under the banner of the 54th in different battles of the Civil War. 37,300 died in combat. The most famous of these was the assault on the battery at Fort Wagner, which was part of the South American defenses in Charleston, South Carolina. On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island, just outside the delta where Charleston is located, an assault was planned on Fort Wagner, which was strategically placed on the atolls by the Southists to defend the city. Federal General Quincy Adams Gillmore was the top-ranking officer in charge of the Union Army South Department, with command in both the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. Gillmore planned the assault on the fort to take over the battery that was being protected by a small garrison of Confederate Infantry and Artillery, attached to the Charleston Batallion and the 1st S.C. Artillery. Gilmore launched Shaw and his men at noon.

The attack by the 54th Regiment was preceded by intense cannon fire from the coast. Armed with bayonets, the blacks of the 54th entered Fort Wagner on the assault, taking advantage of the cracks in its walls opened by federal shells. But the South had clearly misled the Unionist commanders, and the sandbags had held out by failing to destroy their sites. The 54th column thus entered a mousetrap, and was greeted in a bloody fashion with carabiners and heavy artillery fire. A hand-to-hand fight resulted in dozens of deaths and a bloodbath. Legend has it that the defeat of the 54th was summed up in the phrase: "Fighting was fierce. Losses were heavy." The few who were able to retreat were decimated by serious injury or mutilation, and the fortress remained in Confederate hands. Though not for long. For the next two months, Fort Wagner received shrapnel charges every half minute until the last soldiers from the South left it in September.

The decision to send the colored men of 54 over the Wagner battery was a suicide. There are still historians who see the Charleston episode as a use of the Black Volunteer Regiment as guinea pigs to be annihilated and to weaken Wagner's defenses. It was a kind of Little Big Horn with Shaw turned into Custer and the Regiment into the Seventh Cavalry slaughtered by Chief Geronimo. But the memory is still alive many decades later. The fallen of the 54th Regiment now have a monument commemorating their heroism, which encouraged tens of thousands of African Americans to enlist in the cause of freedom and overcoming the slavery established in the southern states. And resistance against racism. They suffered from racist behaviour by white federal soldiers themselves, for example in supplying uniforms or on missions in Charleston, such as looting and dirty work for the military community. 

Robert Gould Shaw wrote regularly to his parents telling them about his experiences as a military man. The letters are housed in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. The letters, full of sentimentality, nostalgia and terror of war, were compiled in Peter Burchard's book "One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw And His Brave Black Regiment" (St. Martin's Press, 1989).