The 54th Massachusetts storms Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. Composed of black volunteers but led by Robert Gould Shaw, a white abolitionist,
the 54th Massachusetts breached the ramparts but was eventually thrown back, sustaining heavy losses. Although the focal point of this
contemporary painting is the death of Shaw, the broader significance of the battle is shown in the foreground, where two black soldiers are
bayoneting their Confederate foes. (See Re-Viewing the Past, Glory, pp. 396–397.)
386 Chapter 14 The War to Save the Union
the area. After the Emancipation Proclamation specifi-
cally authorized the enlistment of blacks, the governor
of Massachusetts moved to organize a black regiment,
the famous Massachusetts 54th. (See Re-Viewing
the Past,Glory, pp. 396–397.) Swiftly thereafter, other
states began to recruit black soldiers, and in May 1863
the federal government established a Bureau of Colored
Troops to supervise their enlistment. By the end of the
war one soldier in eight in the Union army was black.
Enlisting so many black soldiers changed the war
from a struggle to save the Union to a kind of revolu-
tion. “Let the black man... get an eagle on his but-
ton and a musket on his shoulder,” wrote Frederick
Douglass, “and there is no power on earth which can
deny that he has won the right to citizenship.”
At first black soldiers received only $7 a month,
about half what white soldiers were paid. But they
soon proved themselves in battle; of the 178,000 who
served in the Union army, 37,000 were killed, a rate
of loss about 40 percent higher than that among
white troops. The Congressional Medal of Honor
was awarded to twenty-one blacks.
The higher death rates among black soldiers were
partly due to the fury of Confederate soldiers. Many
black captives were killed on the spot. After overrun-
ning the garrison of Fort Pillow on the Mississippi
River, the Confederates massacred several dozen
black soldiers, along with their white commander.
Lincoln was tempted to order reprisals, but he and his
advisers realized that to do so would have been both
morally wrong (two wrongs never make a right) and
likely to lead to still more atrocities. “Blood can not
restore blood,” Lincoln said in his usual direct way.
Letter from a Free Black Volunteer to the
Christian Recorder(1864) at http://www.myhistorylab.comAntietam to Gettysburg
It was well that Lincoln seized on Antietam to release
his proclamation; had he waited for a more impressive
victory, he would have waited nearly a year. To
replace McClellan, he chose General Ambrose E.
Burnside, best known to history for his magnificent
side-whiskers (originally called burnsides, later, at firstReadtheDocument