The 54th Massachusetts — one of the war's first Black regiments — led a charge into Confederate cannon fire that failed militarily but proved forever that Black soldiers would fight and die for freedom.
On the evening of July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry — one of the first African American regiments in the Union Army — was given the honor of leading the assault on Fort Wagner, a heavily fortified Confederate position on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina.
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th's white commander and a Boston Brahmin who had specifically requested command of a Black regiment, led the charge personally at the head of his men. Running across a narrow beach with the ocean on one side and a swamp on the other, the regiment was exposed to devastating fire from every direction.
The 54th reached the fort's parapet and actually breached it — Shaw was killed on the wall, and Sergeant William Carney carried the regiment's flag all the way to the fort's rampart despite being shot twice. He refused to let the colors touch the ground, later saying 'Boys, the old flag never touched the ground!'
The assault ultimately failed. Union casualties were 1,515 against only 174 Confederate, and the fort remained in Confederate hands. Confederate forces buried Shaw in a mass grave with his soldiers — intended as an insult, but his family refused to retrieve his body, saying he would have been proud to be buried with his men.
Sergeant William Harvey Carney's actions at Fort Wagner made him the first African American to earn the Medal of Honor. Sergeant Major Lewis Henry Douglass — son of Frederick Douglass — also fought in the assault and survived, writing to his father about the regiment's courage.
Though a military defeat, Fort Wagner transformed the war. The 54th's conduct destroyed the argument that Black men would not fight. Lincoln pointed to the battle as justification for accelerating African American recruitment, and nearly 180,000 Black soldiers eventually served in the Union Army.