On the evening of July 18, 1863, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw led the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry — one of the first African American regiments raised in the North — in an assault on Battery Wagner, a Confederate fortification guarding the entrance to Charleston Harbor.

The attack failed. Shaw was killed. Nearly half the regiment became casualties.

The 54th Massachusetts won anyway.

What Was at Stake

When Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts began organizing the regiment in January 1863, the question was not primarily military. It was political. Confederate President Jefferson Davis had issued a proclamation: any Black soldier captured would be sold into slavery, and any white officer commanding them would be executed. The Lincoln administration was officially allowing Black enlistment but had not fully committed to equal pay, equal equipment, or equal treatment.

The 54th was an experiment in whether Black men could fight — a question that was, in the minds of many white Northerners including some Union commanders, genuinely open.

Frederick Douglass recruited for the regiment. Two of his sons joined.

Fort Wagner

Battery Wagner was a Confederate earthwork on the southern tip of Morris Island, protected by a wide beach with water on both sides, fronted by a flooded ditch and a palisade. The 54th had marched 100 miles in two days to reach the assault point. They had not eaten since the previous day.

Shaw placed them at the head of the column. They went in at dusk, across a narrow strip of beach with ocean on one side and marsh on the other, under artillery and musketry. Shaw was killed mounting the parapet. Sergeant William Carney — who would receive the Medal of Honor — kept the regimental flag off the ground despite multiple wounds, telling the men who relieved him that the old flag had never touched the ground.

The regiment reached the parapet and held briefly before being driven back. The fort would not fall that night.

The Proof

The assault's military failure was eclipsed by what it demonstrated. The 54th had charged under the worst possible conditions without breaking. Their officer was dead. Their attack had failed. They had gone forward anyway.

The New York Tribune called them the equal of any soldiers alive. The Union Army accelerated Black enlistment. By war's end, 180,000 Black soldiers would serve in the United States Colored Troops — roughly 10 percent of total Union enlistment. Their service was a direct argument, made in blood, against the Confederate premise that African Americans would not fight for their freedom.

Shaw was buried in the fort's ditch with his men. His family, abolitionists who understood the symbolism, declined to have his body recovered.