The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment became famous during and after the U.S. Civil War. To honor the 54th’s soldiers, a monument was built in Boston, the city where the unit was organized. Philip Marcelo describes the carving: “Black men, rifles to their shoulders, march resolutely,” depicted in bronze, “on their way to battle.”
The towering bronze relief in downtown Boston captures the stirring call to arms answered by Black soldiers who served in the state’s famed Civil War fighting unit, which was popularized in the 1989 Oscar-winning movie “Glory.”
The monument was unveiled in 1897. The artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens had worked on it for fourteen years. Encouragement and funding for the cenotaph came from both Black and White citizen of Boston:
The creation of the memorial in the aftermath of the Civil War was championed by prominent Black Bostonians of the day.
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was the commander of the regiment. His family was dedicated to the cause of ending slavery. They championed the 54th during the war, and cherished its memory afterward.
“The colonel’s family, a wealthy Boston” family, wanted to ensure that the monument would recognize the Black soldiers. The Shaw family, “strongly opposed to slavery, requested that” the monument “also honor the Black men who served and died” bravely and with committed perseverance “during their famed charge on Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863.”
The monument is also significant because it’s the nation’s first honoring Black soldiers, said Elizabeth Vizza, executive director of the Friends of the Public Garden, a group helping pay for a $3 million restoration of the monument, which started in earnest in May.Saint-Gaudens spent 14 years creating a richly detailed bas relief, using Black men of different ages as models for his realistic soldiers. After it was unveiled to fanfare in 1897, American author Henry James declared the work “real perfection,” according to the National Park Service.
“This was a radical piece of art,” Vizza said. “It was not lost on people back then.”
For over a century, the monument has been a symbol and an inspiration to African Americans and their advancement toward civil rights. Philip Marcello continues:
Roughly half the regiment’s 600 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or presumed dead following the failed assault on Fort Wagner, and their heroism inspired tens of thousands of Black men and others to sign up for the Union Army, helping turn the tide of the war.Sgt. William Carney became the first Black man awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the regiment’s flag from capture. Two sons of prominent Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had pushed Lincoln to allow Blacks to serve in the war, also fought at Fort Wagner.
The powerful and uplifting monument, created to “recognize the achievements of the Black soldiers” is located prominently in one of Boston’s more important neighborhoods — a neighborhood called Beacon Hill.
