The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and the Shaw Memorial: A Boston Story
One of the first Black regiments raised in the North during the Civil War marched out of Boston in 1863. Here is its story and the monument that honors it.
Across Beacon Street from the State House stands one of the most moving monuments in America. A bronze relief shows a column of Black soldiers marching shoulder to shoulder, with their colonel on horseback beside them. It honors the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first Black regiments raised in the North during the Civil War.
Forming the regiment
Early in the Civil War, Black men were not allowed to serve in the Union Army. That changed after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in January 1863. Massachusetts Governor John Andrew, a strong opponent of slavery, moved quickly to raise a Black regiment.
Recruits came from across the North and from Canada. Frederick Douglass helped recruit soldiers, and two of his sons joined the regiment. The regiment’s officers were white, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the son of a prominent Boston abolitionist family.
The men trained at Camp Meigs in Readville, in what is now Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. On May 28, 1863, they marched through Boston to cheering crowds before boarding a ship for South Carolina.
Fort Wagner
On July 18, 1863, the 54th led an assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold guarding the approach to Charleston Harbor. The attack failed, and the regiment suffered heavy losses. Colonel Shaw was killed on the fort’s wall.
Sergeant William H. Carney, though wounded several times, kept the regiment’s flag from touching the ground. He later received the Medal of Honor, and his actions are often cited among the earliest by a Black soldier to earn that honor.
The bravery of the 54th was widely reported in the North. It helped change public opinion about Black soldiers, and many more Black regiments were raised in the months that followed.
The fight for equal pay
The soldiers of the 54th faced another battle. The federal government offered them lower pay than white soldiers. In protest, the men refused to accept any pay at all until they were paid equally. They served for many months without pay before Congress acted to equalize wages.
The memorial
The Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial was created by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who worked on it for well over a decade. It was dedicated in 1897 at the edge of Boston Common, across from the State House.
- The relief gives each soldier an individual face, a deliberate choice by the artist.
- For many years, the names of the enlisted men who died were not on the monument. Their names were added in the 1980s.
- The memorial is the first stop on the Black Heritage Trail.
Remembering the 54th
The story of the regiment reached a wide audience through the 1989 film Glory. But the best way to connect with it may be to stand in front of the memorial on a cold February day, look at the faces in the bronze and remember the men who marched from Boston to fight for a country that did not yet treat them as equals. For tours and history, visit the National Park Service at nps.gov/boaf.
