Raising an African American Regiment

After the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on 1 January 1863, Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts quickly secured authorization from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to recruit "persons of African descent, organized into special corps" to fight for the Union cause. While former enslaved people were enlisted locally in Union-occupied areas of Louisiana and South Carolina, and in Kansas, there remained strong resistance to recruiting African Americans. The War Department refused to commission Black officers, or to provide equal pay for Black soldiers.

Anxious to raise a Black regiment before the federal government could reconsider the matter, Governor Andrew wrote to Francis G. Shaw, asking him to forward an enclosed letter to his son, in which Andrew offered the younger Shaw command of the new unit that would become the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry; view the online presentation of the letter from Governor Andrew to Robert Gould Shaw.

Robert Gould Shaw

In selecting Captain Shaw for command of the "special corps" of African Americans, Governor Andrew had chosen, as he phrased it, a gentleman "of the highest tone and honor," a tested combat veteran who also had strong family connections to abolitionist leaders in Massachusetts. Named for his grandfather, one of Boston's wealthiest merchants, Robert Gould Shaw was born in Boston on 10 October 1837, and grew up in a life of privilege. In 1841, his father, Francis George Shaw, retired from business to devote himself to literary study, philanthropy, and antislavery, a cause shared by Robert's mother, Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw. The Shaw family moved from Boston to West Roxbury, Massachusetts, where they lived near the site--and under the influence--of the utopian community at Brook Farm. Later they lived in New York and then moved to Europe where Robert studied in Switzerland and Germany before he returned to Massachusetts to attend Harvard College. He left college without graduating in 1859 to enter business in New York City where he met Annie Kneeland Haggerty, whom he would marry in May 1863, only two months before his death.

When the Civil War began, Shaw served briefly in the socially elite 7th New York Infantry Regiment ("the Darling Seventh"), before receiving a commission in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, an equally elite Bay State regiment. Shaw saw eighteen months of hard service in Virginia and Maryland with the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, including the Battles of Cedar Mountain and Antietam, and had been promoted to the rank of captain before his name was put forward for command of the new African American regiment.

In writing to Francis Shaw, rather than directly to Robert Gould Shaw, Governor Andrew hoped to encourage the father to influence the son's decision. In fact, the elder Shaw hand carried the message to his son's camp in Virginia where he delivered it on 3 February 1863. This was a wise move because Robert Gould Shaw initially was very reluctant to leave his surviving comrades in the 2nd Massachusetts, and less enthusiastic than his parents about the "special corps" that Andrew proposed to raise. Governor Andrew hoped to avoid public embarrassment and damage to the effort to recruit Black soldiers if Shaw refused the command: "I don't want the office to go begging," he wrote to Shaw's father, "and if this offer is refused I would prefer its being kept reasonably private." At first the younger Shaw did refuse the appointment, but two days later he relented, at least in part to please his parents, an action that would lead to his own death, but immortal fame for his regiment for their gallant attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on 18 July 1863.

The 54th Regiment Reborn

On 21 November 2008, in a ceremony at the Massachusetts State House, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was reactivated as the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment to serve as the ceremonial unit of the Massachusetts National Guard. The new 54th renders military honors at funerals and state functions. The unit marched in Washington in the presidential inaugural parade on 20 January 2009--an event filled with historic symbolism--joined there, as it had been at its reactivation ceremony, by Company A, 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (The 54th Massachusetts Glory Brigade, Inc.), African American reenactors based in Mattapan, Massachusetts. Both the members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment and the reenactors of Company A honor the memory of the original 54th, of whom Governor Andrew wrote, "I know not 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."