The free black community in Boston was also instrumental in recruiting efforts, utilizing networks reaching beyond Massachusetts and even into the Southern states to attract soldiers and fill out the ranks.

During the latter engagement, the 54th Massachusetts, with other Union regiments, executed a frontal assault against Fort Wagner and suffered casualties of 20 killed, 125 wounded, and 102 missing (primarily presumed dead)—roughly 40 percent of the unit's numbers at that time.

[8] The service of the 54th Massachusetts, particularly their charge at Fort Wagner, soon became one of the most famous episodes of the war, interpreted through artwork, poetry, and song.

[12] General recruitment of African Americans for service in the Union Army was authorized by the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863.

Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton accordingly instructed the Governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, to begin raising regiments including "persons of African descent" on January 26, 1863.

[2] Wendell Phillips and Edward L. Pierce spoke at a Joy Street Church recruiting rally, encouraging free blacks to enlist.

[18] About 100 people were actively involved in recruitment, including those from Joy Street Church and a group of individuals appointed by Governor Andrew to enlist black men for the 54th.

[19] Among those appointed was George E. Stephens, African-American military correspondent to the Weekly Anglo-African who recruited over 200 men in Philadelphia and would go on to serve as a First Sergeant in the 54th.

[21] Material support included warm clothing items, battle flags, and $500 contributed for the equipping and training of a regimental band.

[24] This was despite the fact that Jefferson Davis's proclamation of December 23, 1862, effectively put both African-American enlisted men and white officers under a death sentence if captured on the grounds that they were inciting servile insurrection.

They were greeted by local blacks and by Northern abolitionists, some of whom had deployed from Boston a year earlier as missionaries to the Port Royal Experiment.

[31] The regiment's first engagement took place during the Battle of Grimball's Landing on James Island, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina, on July 16, 1863.

[32] In an account of the engagement, which was later published, First Sergeant Robert John Simmons of the 54th Massachusetts (a British Army veteran from Bermuda) described a "desperate battle" in which about 250 pickets of the regiment were attacked by about 900 Confederates.

[34] The regiment gained widespread acclaim on July 18, 1863, when it spearheaded an assault on Fort Wagner, a key position overlooking the water approach to Charleston Harbor.

[3] Under the command of now-Colonel Edward Hallowell, the 54th fought a rear-guard action covering the Union retreat to Jacksonville Florida after their defeat at the Battle of Olustee.

'[3] After the Battle there was a large number of wounded soldiers and abandoned equipment from the 54th Massachusetts, as well as the Federal Cavalry, and part of the 7th Connecticut.

By the end of the ordeal, from the arrival of the 54th Massachusetts to Olustee, the fighting of the battle, and then the retreat back to Jacksonville, the troops had marched roughly 120 miles in a span of four and a half days, causing exhaustion within the regiment.

Brevet Major General Joseph Hawley, commanding the second brigade of Seymour's army, containing the 7th Connecticut, 7th New Hampshire and Eighth United States Colored Troops,[43] was frustrated by what he considered inaccuracy in newspaper reports.

Hawley wrote to Charles Dudley saying, "Don't publish the damned lie that anybody on foot but the 7th Conn. covered the entire retreat from Olustee.

[44] Later in the Florida campaign, as part of an all-black brigade under Col. Alfred S. Hartwell, the 54th Massachusetts unsuccessfully attacked entrenched Confederate militia at the November 1864 Battle of Honey Hill.

"[14] The Congressional bill, enacted on June 16, 1864, authorized equal and full pay to those enlisted troops who had been free men as of April 19, 1861.

[51] Colonel Hallowell skillfully crafted the oath to say: "You do solemnly swear that you owed no man unrequited labor on or before the 19th day of April 1861.

[55] Governor John A. Andrew said of the regiment, "I know not where, in all of human history, to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory.

[3] Colonel Shaw and his men feature prominently in Robert Lowell's Civil War centennial poem "For the Union Dead."

"[59] As a recognition and honor, at the end of the Civil War, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, and the 33rd Colored Regiment were mustered out at the Battery Wagner site of the mass burial of the 54th Massachusetts.

[45] More recently, the story of the unit was depicted in the 1989 Academy Award-winning film Glory, starring Matthew Broderick as Shaw, Denzel Washington as Private Trip, Morgan Freeman, Cary Elwes, Jihmi Kennedy and Andre Braugher[60] The film re-established the now-popular image of the combat role African Americans played in the Civil War, and the unit, often represented in historical battle reenactments, now has the nickname the "Glory" regiment.