1     Colonel Robert G. Shaw
killed while leading
The 54th Massachusetts Regiment
to the assault on
Fort Wagner – South Carolina
July 18th 1863

2     Robert Gould Shaw
Colonel of the 54th Regiment
of Massachusetts Volunteers
Killed while leading
the Regiment to the assault on
Fort Wagner – South Carolina
July 18th. 1863

3     The 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers
Robert Gould Shaw – Colonel
Buried with the men whom he led to the
assault on Fort Sumter Wagner, South Carolina
in which he was killed July 18th 1863

4     The 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
In the assault to which he led the regiment
on Fort Wagner, South Carolina July 18. 1863
he was killed with many officers and men
and there he was buried with his men

5     This Regiment
The first body of colored troops organized
in the north was reviewed on they spot by
Governor Andrew
May 18, 1863

6     "I shall go in advance with the
National Flag. We shall take the fort
or die there! Good-by!"

7     "O fair haired northern hero
With thy guard of dusky hue
Up from the field of battle
Rise to the last review" [From Anna Waterston's poem "Together".]

8     Buried with the men God gave him
Those whom he was sent to save:
Buried where his dust so precious
Makes the soil a hallowed grave. [Slightly varies from Elizabeth B. Sedgwick's poem "Buried with his Niggers".]

Governor Andrew said when he gave the Fifty-fourth Regiment
their orders

"I know not where in all human history to any 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".

In the first days of the Rebellion (Civil War) in 1861 Governor
Andrew urged upon President Lincoln the use (enlistment) of colored
troops, not upon any narrow but upon the broadest ground both of
policy and of principle. (He said that) Duty and safety alike demanded the immediate
use of colored troops as men whose service to the country should be
the same as that of our white sons and brethren; thus over-ruling
all objections growing out of the existing condition of Slavery; thus
ignoring the idea (conception) that the colored men were chattels or
things belonging to those who claimed to be their masters