Shaw/54th Regiment Memorial, Boston Common - American Civil War Monuments and Memorials on Waymarking.com

On July 18, 1863, Robert Gould Shaw led the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry into battle at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. During the assault on the fort, a site of strategic importance near Charleston, approximately 40% of the regiment had been killed, injured, or taken captured - Shaw himself perished in the charge. A truce was declared the next day, and September, the fort had been abandoned.

The assault was not just of military significance, however. On January 1st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, not only freeing slaves, but authorizing Black enlistment in the Union Army. The 54th was the first regiment composed entirely of African-Americans recruited from the North, and their valor shown in battle helped prove to the nation that blacks were strong, brave, and courageous enough to fight alongside their white counterparts.

This memorial was sculpted over the course of a decade by famed artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Financed through public donations, organized mainly by Joshua B. Smith, former state representative and employee in the Shaw household. The memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1897, in the northern portion of Boston Common, across Beacon Street from the State House.

The bronze relief was originally envisioned as a equestrian statue of a lone Shaw, but soon transformed into a work showing Shaw and his soldiers heading into battle. On the reverse of the monument is a list of the officers and Bostonian members of the 54th to be killed in battle, as well as a number of other poetic inscriptions.

Sources: The National Gallery of Art, The National Park Service

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