Colonel Robert Gould Shaw led roughly 600 men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in a frontal assault against the heavily fortified Confederate position guarding Charleston Harbor. Nearly half the regiment was killed, wounded, or captured, and Shaw died atop the parapet. Though a tactical defeat, the assault proved the courage and combat capability of Black soldiers, accelerating Black enlistment across the Union.
The attack began at dusk, the regiment advancing along a narrow strip of beach under withering artillery and rifle fire from the fort's defenders. Sergeant William Carney, though shot multiple times, refused to let the regimental flag touch the ground and later became the first African American awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that night.
Colonel Shaw, a 25-year-old white abolitionist from a prominent Boston family, was shot through the heart as he reached the fort's parapet, sword raised, urging his men forward. Confederate soldiers, intending it as an insult, buried him in a mass grave with his Black soldiers rather than granting him a separate officer's burial. His father, learning of this, famously declared he could think of no holier place for his son to lie.
News of the regiment's valor spread through Northern newspapers, undercutting arguments that Black men lacked the discipline or bravery for combat. Frederick Douglass, whose own son served in the regiment, used the battle as evidence in his relentless push for full Black enlistment. The 1989 film 'Glory' later dramatized the assault for a new generation.
Key people: Robert Gould Shaw, William Carney, Frederick Douglass