The general called out the bearer of the national colors, and grasped the flag. Loudly, Strong asked, ‘Is there a man here who thinks himself unable to sleep in that fort tonight?’ ‘No!’ shouted the 54th. Strong pointed down the stretch of sand to the sinister hump of a Confederate earthwork that loomed amidst the roiling smoke and spitting fire of the guns. The officer was handsome and smartly dressed, and grasped the reins of his prancing gray steed with white-gloved hands.
Suddenly, a mounted general and his staff rode up before the assembled ranks. But despite his initial trepidations, the Harvard-educated son of abolitionist parents had assumed the weighty responsibilities of command, and never wavered in his fervent resolve to show friend and foe alike that black soldiers were the fighting equals of their white counterparts. Slight and fair-haired, Robert Gould Shaw appeared even younger than his 25 years. That they had succeeded in the face of bigotry and doubt was due in great measure to the colonel who led them. The path that had brought these determined men to the embattled sands of South Carolina had been a long one, born of idealism and fraught with difficulty. The regiment’s baptism of fire had come only two days before, but the memories of that sharp skirmish had already begun to fade in the shadow of the awesome task that now lay before them. The air was filled with the rumble of big guns, and the very ground on Morris Island, South Carolina, trembled beneath their feet. Tired, hungry and proud, the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry stood in the light of the setting sun and awaited the call to battle on the evening of July 18, 1863.
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