by Noel Rae
In July, 1863, another expedition took the regiment up the Edisto River to destroy a railroad bridge and bring back slaves. This was a hard assignment. “After the capture of Port Royal, the outlying plantations along the whole southern coast were abandoned, and the slaves withdrawn into the interior. It was necessary to ascend some river for thirty miles in order to reach the black population at all. This ascent could only be made by night, as it was a slow process, and the smoke of a steamboat could be seen for a great distance. The streams were usually shallow, winding, and muddy, and the difficulties of navigation were such as to require a full moon and a flood tide.” There was also reported to be a battery of artillery at Wiltown Bluff, and wooden barricades across some parts of the river.
“In former narrations I have sufficiently described the charm of a moonlight ascent into a hostile country, upon an unknown stream, the dark and silent banks, the rippling water, the wail of the reed-birds, the anxious watch, the breathless listening, the veiled lights, the whispered orders.” At four in the morning they reached Wiltown Bluff where they quickly knocked out the battery. “As the firing ceased and the smoke cleared away, I looked across the rice fields which lay beneath the bluff. The first sunbeams glowed upon their emerald levels and on the blossoming hedges along the rectangular dikes. What were those black dots which everywhere appeared? Those moist meadows had become alive with human heads, and along each narrow path came a straggling file of men and women, all on a run for the river-side … Presently they began to come from the houses also, with their little bundles on their heads; then with larger bundles. Old women, trotting on the narrow paths, would kneel to pray a little prayer, still balancing the bundle; and then would suddenly spring up, urged by the accumulating procession behind, and would move on till irresistibly compelled by thankfulness to dip down for another invocation. Reaching us, every human being must grasp our hands, amid exclamations of ‘Bless you, master!’ and ‘Bless the Lord!’ … Women brought children on their shoulders; small black boys carried on their back little brothers equally inky and, gravely depositing them, shook hands.”
The rest of the expedition did not go so smoothly; the railroad bridge was too heavily defended to be destroyed, the boats had to fight their way back down river, and there were several casualties, including Higginson who was wounded. But, as he later wrote, “Before the war, how great a thing seemed the rescue of even one man from slavery; and since the war has emancipated all, how little seems the liberation of two hundred! But no one then knew how the contest might end; and when I think of that morning sunlight, those emerald fields, those thronging numbers, the old women with their prayers, and the little boys with their living burdens, I know that the day was worth all it cost, and more.”
Of all black regiments the most famous was the Massachusetts 54th, whose history was told by one of its white officers, Captain Luis Emilio, in his book, A Brave Black Regiment:
“At the close of the year 1862, the military situation was discouraging to the supporters of the Federal Government. We had been repulsed at Fredericksburg and at Vicksburg, and at tremendous cost had fought the battle of Stone River. Some sixty-five thousand troops would be discharged during the ensuing summer and fall. Volunteering was at a standstill. On the other hand, the Confederates, having filled their ranks, were never better fitted for conflict.
“In consequence of the situation, the arming of Negroes, first determined upon in October, 1862, was fully adopted as a military measure; and President Lincoln, on Jan. 1, 1863, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In September, 1862, General Butler began organizing the Louisiana Native Guards from free Negroes. General Saxton, in the Department of the South, formed the First South Carolina from contrabands in October of the same year. Col. James Williams, in the summer of 1862, recruited the First Kansas Colored. After these regiments next came, in order of organization, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, which was the first raised in the Northern States east of the Mississippi River. Thenceforward the recruiting of colored troops, North and South, was rapidly pushed. As a result of the measure, 167 organizations of all arms, embracing 186,097 enlisted men of African descent were mustered into the United States service.”
John Andrew, the governor of Massachusetts, had long been an advocate of black enlistment. Shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation he went down to Washington and extracted from the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, a letter authorizing him to raise a regiment of volunteers that “may include persons of African descent, organized into special corps.” Andrew’s next step was to recruit officers who would be “gentlemen of the highest tone and honor” from the “circles of educated anti-slavery society.” Robert Gould Shaw, of a prominent abolitionist family, would be the colonel.
“At the time a strong prejudice existed against arming the blacks and those who dared to command them. The sentiment of the country and of the army was opposed to the measure. It was asserted that they would not fight, that their employment would prolong the war, and that white troops would refuse to serve with them. Besides the moral courage required to accept commissions in the Fifty-fourth at the time it was organizing, physical courage was also necessary, for the Confederate Congress, on May 1, 1863, passed an act, a portion of which read as follows: ‘Every white person being a commissioned officer, or acting as such, who, during the present war, shall command Negroes or mulattoes in arms against the Confederate States … shall be deemed as inciting servile insurrection, and shall, if captured, be put to death.’” (In December, 1862, Jefferson Davis had already issued a “proclamation of outlawry” ordering that “all negro slaves captured in arms be at once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective States to which they belong, to be dealt with according to the laws of said States” i.e. be executed. In May, 1863, this was extended to all blacks and mulattoes, free or slave, “who gave aid or comfort to the enemies of the Confederacy.”)
Although the rate of volunteering among free blacks was much higher than among whites, there were not enough of them in Massachusetts to fill the regiment, so recruiters spread out across the free states. A powerful assist came from Rochester, New York, with some splendid rhetoric in the form of the broadside “Men of Color, to Arms!” “When first the rebel cannon shattered the walls of Sumter and drove away its starving garrison, I predicted that the war then and there inaugurated would not be fought out entirely by white men,” wrote Frederick Douglass. “A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it.” And now, at last, this call was being heeded. “From East to West, from North to South, the sky is written all over, ‘Now or never!’ Liberty won by white men would lose half its luster. ‘Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.’ ‘Better even die free, than to live slaves.’ This is the sentiment of every brave colored man among us … By every consideration which binds you to your enslaved fellow-countrymen, and the peace and welfare of your country; by every aspiration which you cherish for the freedom and equality of yourselves and your children; by all the ties of blood and identity which make us one with the brave black men now fighting our battles in Louisiana and South Carolina, I urge you to fly to arms, and smite with death the power that would bury the government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave.” Although New York had not yet decided to raise a regiment, “we can get at the throat of treason and slavery through the State of Massachusetts,” which “now welcomes you to arms as soldiers. She has but a small colored population from which to recruit, so “go quickly and help fill up the first colored regiment from the North … Do not hesitate … Do not doubt. The day dawns; the morning star is bright upon the horizon! The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty … This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept it, and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemi
es. Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the blessings of our posterity …”
The first intake, which included several former slaves, arrived at Camp Meigs, Readville, near Boston, in February, and by mid-May the regiment was completed. Recruitment for another, the 55th, began at once. Soon after, Governor Andrew and other dignitaries attended a parade at Readville at which he presented four flags, “brilliant in color and of the finest texture, fluttering in the fresh breeze.” These were “a national flag, a State color, an emblematic banner of white silk with the figure of the Goddess of Liberty, and the motto ‘Liberty, Loyalty, and Unity,’ and another with a cross upon a blue shield, and the motto, In Hoc Signo Vinces. (In this sign, conquer!) After presenting them, Governor Andrew delivered a high-flown speech, whose peroration ran: “I know not, Mr. Commander, when, in all human history, to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory as the work committed to you. And may the infinite mercy of Almighty God attend you every hour of every day through all the experiences and vicissitudes of that dangerous life in which you have embarked; may the God of our fathers cover your heads in the day of battle; may He shield you with the arms of everlasting power; may He hold you always—most of all, first of all, and last of all—up to the highest and holiest conception of duty, so that if, on the field of stricken fight, your souls shall be delivered from the thraldom of the flesh, your spirits shall go home to God, bearing aloft the exulting thought of duty well performed, of glory and reward won, even at the hands of the angels who shall watch over you from above!”
At the request of General David Hunter, commander of the Department of the South and a keen abolitionist, the regiment was ordered to the Sea Islands, to take part in the siege of Charleston. On the morning of May 28, the regiment arrived at Boston railroad station and then, bands playing, marched through the city’s streets on their way to the docks. “All along the route the sidewalks, windows, and balconies were thronged with spectators, and the appearance of the regiment caused repeated cheers and waving of flags and handkerchiefs. The national colors were displayed everywhere … Entering State Street, the band played the stirring music of John Brown’s hymn, while passing over ground moistened by the blood of Crispus Attucks [killed by the redcoats in the Boston Massacre of 1770], and over which Anthony Burns and Thomas Sims had been carried back to bondage. It is a curious fact that Sims himself witnessed the march of the 54th. All along this street the reception accorded was most hearty; and from the steps of the Exchange, crowded with business men, the appearance of the regimental colors was the signal for repeated and rousing cheers.”
Upon arriving at Battery Wharf the regiment embarked on the steamer De Molay, and at four o’clock “the lines were cast off and the vessel slowly moved from the wharf, where friendly and loving hands waved adieus, to which those on board responded.”
Two months later, the regiment was drawn up on the sandy beach of low-lying Morris Island preparatory to an assault on Fort Wagner, one of the strongholds defending Charleston harbor, heavily defended by artillery and some seventeen hundred Confederate troops. After a day-long bombardment by Union gunboats the fort had fallen silent, and “the belief was general that the enemy had been driven from his shelter, and the armament of Wagner rendered harmless.” Unaware that in fact only eight rebels had been killed and twenty wounded, General Gilmore decided on a frontal assault. Colonel Gould requested the “post of honor”—leading the attack—for the Fifty-fourth. Gould must have known how hazardous this would be: the soldiers, already tired from long marches, would have to advance three quarters of a mile through heavy sand and without any cover towards “the strongest single earthwork known in the history of warfare.” Daylight was fading, and the incoming tide narrowed the beach, forcing the exposed attackers to bunch up or wade knee-deep through the water. But, like most of his comrades, Gould was anxious to prove that “the Negro would fight.” As Captain Emilio put it: “The whole question of employing three hundred thousand colored soldiers hung in the balance. But few, however, doubted the result. Wherever a white officer led that night, even to the gun-muzzles and bayonet points, there, by his side, were black men as brave and steadfast as himself.
“Away over the sea to the eastward the heavy sea-fog was gathering, the western sky bright with the reflected light, for the sun had set. Far away thunder mingled with the occasional boom of cannon. The gathering host all about, the silent lines stretching away to the rear, the passing of a horseman now and then carrying orders—all was ominous of the impending onslaught. Far and indistinct in front was the now silent earthwork, seamed, scarred, and ploughed with shot, its flag still waving in defiance.
“It was about 7.45 pm, with darkness coming on rapidly, when the Fifty-fourth moved.” Guns from Fort Sumter and Sullivan’s Island fired on the regiment, but Fort Wagner remained largely silent. Gould and the color sergeant led the attack, and “with eyes strained upon the colonel and the flag,” the soldiers “pressed on toward the work, now only two hundred yards away.
“At that moment Wagner became a mound of fire, from which poured a stream of shot and shell. Just a brief lull, and the deafening explosions of cannon were renewed, mingled with the crash and rattle of musketry. A sheet of flame, followed by a running fire, like electric sparks, swept along the parapet …When this tempest of war came, before which men fell in numbers on every side, the only response the 54th made to the deadly challenge was to change step to the double-quick, that it might the sooner close with the foe … As the swifter pace was taken, and officers sprang to the fore with waving swords barely seen in the darkness, the men closed the gaps, and with set jaws, panting breath, and bowed heads, charged on.” They reached the ditch in front of the fort’s wall. “Down into this they went, through the two or three feet of water therein, and mounted the slope beyond in the teeth of the enemy, some of whom, standing on the crest, fired down on them … Both flags were planted on the parapet … Colonel Shaw had led his regiment from first to last. Gaining the rampart, he stood there for a moment with uplifted sword, shouting, ‘Forward, Fifty-fourth!’ and then fell dead, shot through the heart.”
There was savage hand-to-hand fighting, but so great were their losses that “numbers soon told against the 54th, for it was tens against hundreds. Outlined against the sky, they were a fair mark for the foe. Men fell every moment … The garrison was stronger than had been supposed, and brave in defending the work. The first rush had failed … and the supports were not at hand to take full advantage of their first fierce attack. Repulsed from the crest after the short hand-to-hand struggle, the assailants fell back,” and then withdrew completely.
So many officers were killed or wounded that the narrator, Luis Emilio, the regiment’s junior captain, became its temporary commanding officer. Further attempts to storm the fort by other regiments also failed, with heavy losses and with Union soldiers firing on each other in the darkness and confusion. Soon after the attack Lt. Iredell Jones of the C. S. A. visited Fort Wagner and reported that “the dead and wounded were piled up in a ditch together, sometimes fifty in a heap, and they were strewn all over the plain for a distance of three fourths of a mile … Numbers of both white and black were killed on top of our breastworks as well as inside. The Negroes fought gallantly, and were headed by as brave a colonel as ever lived. He mounted the breastworks waving his sword, and at the head of his regiment, and he and a Negro orderly sergeant fell dead over the inner crest of the works. The Negroes were as fine-looking a set as I ever saw.”
Later that year Fort Wagner was taken with little loss of life by laying siege to it in the classic manner—sapping, mining and digging trenches that zig-zagged closer and closer until huge amounts of gunpowder could be buried under the outer walls, and then blowing everything up (except that the defenders abandoned the fort before that could happen). But if it could be taken that simply, why sacrifice so many in a frontal assault? The answ
er was that the purpose of the attack was not so much to capture the fort as to demonstrate the valor of black soldiers. This they certainly did, and were acknowledged at the time to have done so. Fort Wagner, said the New-York Tribune, would be to black Americans what Bunker Hill was to white Americans. “Through the cannon smoke of that dark night,” wrote the Atlantic Monthly, “the manhood of the colored race shines before many eyes that would not see.” The Boston Commonwealth quoted a white soldier as saying “We don’t know any black men here, they’re all soldiers.” However, as it turned out, one such battle was not enough, and throughout the war they had to prove themselves again and again—and indeed in subsequent wars too.