Glory
146 years ago today, the 54th Massachusetts led the assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The all-black regiment and its white officers were decimated, the dead including Col. Robert Gould Shaw, depicted with his soldiers above in the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common and in the 1989 film Glory.
Quick reading list:
Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Russell Duncan
A Brave Black Regiment first person account of Captain Luis F. Emilio
Undying Glory: The Story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment Clinton Cox
Hope & Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment Martin H. Blatt
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:16 pm Comments (2) on Saturday, July 18, 2009
2 Responses to “Glory”
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July 18th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
What a brave set of soldiers. Too bad they were still Yankees!
For more than 20 years I lived about a mile from the site of Battery Wagner. occasionally, the local paper would report on how some bones or buttons had been found on Folly Island, and how they belonged to members of the 54th, as well as a few other regiments that were garrisoned there. Everybody knows about what the 54th went through at the battle, but less people know about the pestilential conditions they suffered under while living on Folly Island. Malaria and cholera were just a couple of the bugs that could ‘git’ you. The dead soldiers were usually buried in groups, and if there were markers on the graves they are long gone.
My hat has always been off to units like the 54th Mass and the 20th Maine, even though my ancestors fought for the other side….
July 18th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
[...] this to a friend?Subscribe to the comments for this post?Blogger/journalist Jules Crittenden reminds us that today is the 146th anniversary of the doomed assault of the 54th Massachusetts on Fort Wagner, [...]