On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island, near Charleston, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Union regiment composed entirely of free African-American men, began their assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold.

After the war, a sergeant of the 54th, William Harvey Carney, became the first African-American to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for taking up the fallen Union flag and carrying it to the fort’s walls.

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the regiment, was killed in the charge, along with 116 of his men, and the Union forces failed to capture the fortress. Shaw, an abolitionist born to a prominent Boston family, had been recruited by Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew to raise and command the all-black regiment, the first of its kind in the Civil War.

Shortly after the battle, the printing firm of Currier and Ives commemorated the 54th’s charge, portraying black soldiers carrying the Union flag over the fort’s ramparts and into the Confederate phalanx. One of the few surviving copies of this print is now at the Gilder Lehrman Collection in New York City. To view it and to learn more about the Civil War era, visit the Gilder Lehrman Institute Web site at www.gilderlehrman.org.

— James G. Basker, President, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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