The Real Soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts: Men from South-Central Pennsylvania

A bronze sculpture of a soldier of the 54th Massachusetts marching forward, from the Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Memorial in Boston (NPS Photo/Boston African American National Historic Site).

When the 54th Massachusetts Infantry left Boston on May 28, 1863, only 133 of its men, 13%, called Massachusetts home. The state had only 1,973 Black men of fighting age (18-45) in 1860, too few to fill a regiment. Ohio sent 155 men and New York 183, and well over 300, the most from any state, came from Pennsylvania. A National Park Service article by John D. Hoptak looks at the men from south-central Pennsylvania, the area within forty-five miles of Gettysburg to the west, north and east: at least 124 soldiers who were born in, lived in or enlisted from the region, more than one company’s worth.

Who the regiment’s men were

The article starts from the 1989 film Glory, which it credits with drawing wide attention to the nearly 200,000 Black men who wore the Union uniform in the war’s final two years, a full 10% of the Union’s fighting force. It also lists the film’s mistakes. The regiment was organized in late winter and early spring 1863, not the fall of 1862. Governor John Andrew offered Colonel Robert Gould Shaw command by a letter to Shaw’s father, not at a gathering with Frederick Douglass. And Battery Wagner was not “never taken” as the closing credits say: Confederate forces abandoned it in early September 1863, about seven weeks after the 54th’s assault. Its main criticism is that every Black soldier in the film is invented and three of the four main ones had been enslaved, which suggests a regiment of southern-born former slaves when it was mostly free-born Black men from across the Northern states.

The regiment came into existence on January 26, 1863, when Andrew received the War Department’s authorization. It was the first regiment of Black volunteers raised in the Northern states east of the Mississippi River. The War Department required white commissioned officers, so Andrew chose white officers with anti-slavery views, among them Shaw and Edward “Ned” Hallowell. Because Massachusetts had so few eligible men, a committee of ten abolitionists and agents including Frederick Douglass recruited across the North, and newspapers in south-central Pennsylvania reported groups of volunteers leaving Columbia, Carlisle and Chambersburg between March and May 1863.

A portrait of 124 men

The article built its profile from the regiment’s record books, the roster in Luis Emilio’s regimental history and service records at the National Archives.

Most said they were born in Pennsylvania. Twenty named another state: ten Maryland, seven Virginia, and one each New York, Illinois and North Carolina. How many had been born into slavery is not known. Regimental records identify only thirty of the 1,300 men who served as born into slavery, but historian Edwin Redkey found that 322, or 24.75%, were born in slave states, and the article argues the number of formerly enslaved men must have been much higher, since men who had fled had reason to hide it. One, Hezekiah Allen McPherson, was born in Prince George’s County, escaped to freedom and settled in Harrisburg as John McPherson; he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Thirty-two of the 124 came from Mercersburg and eighteen each from Carlisle and Harrisburg.

A page from the Descriptive Book of Company I, which includes the Christy brothers and others from Mercersburg (National Archives and Records Administration).

Mercersburg and “Little Africa”

Mercersburg was a very small town: in 1860 it had 900 people, only 89 of them Black. Many of the 54th’s men likely came from “Little Africa,” a thriving African American settlement two miles west of it with more than 400 Black residents before the war, on a heavily used Underground Railroad route and wary of fugitive slave patrols. In all, 88 Black men from around Mercersburg and Little Africa served in the Union army, 32 of them in the 54th.

Brothers served together. The four Christy brothers were all in Company I, and William was reported missing at Olustee and died in Confederate captivity. The four Krunkleton brothers, all farmers, joined Company K on May 6, 1863. Cyrus was killed at James Island on July 16, William and Wesley were badly wounded there, and James was wounded at Battery Wagner two days later, so all four fell within 48 hours. A doctor at the hospital in Beaufort, South Carolina, where three of them lay, Esther Hill Hawks, wrote in her diary that one of them said they had offered to serve when the war began but none would have them, and that when Governor Andrew gave them a chance nearly every man in their community who could carry a musket went. William died of pneumonia on April 14, 1865; only James and Wesley returned home.

While the men were away, Confederate troops marching toward Gettysburg in late June 1863 captured Black women, children and men around Mercersburg and took them south to be sold into slavery; local diaries called it a slave hunt. The article says relatives and friends of men in the 54th were more than probably among the victims.

Under fire, and home again

Most of the region’s men served in Companies I and K, the last two organized, and trained at Camp Meigs, in Readville, Massachusetts, for under a month. The regiment spent twenty-six months in the Department of the South, in Georgia, Florida and especially South Carolina, and was mustered out on August 20, 1865. At least 176 of its men died in battle or captivity and 93 from disease or accident, 269 in all, and 294 were wounded but survived. Of the 124 from south-central Pennsylvania, more than half became casualties: eight died of disease, several were captured, 42 were wounded and 15 were killed in battle.

Its first fight was on James Island on July 16, 1863. Two days later it led the dusk assault on Battery Wagner, on Morris Island. The attack failed with heavy casualties and killed Shaw, but it made headlines in the North and South, and the article quotes Thomas Wentworth Higginson, himself a commander of a Black regiment, as writing in 1897 that it did more than anything else, perhaps, to convince the public that Black troops could fight. Eight men from the region died as a result of the assault and 24 others were wounded. Two taken prisoner there, Stewart Wesley Woods and Alford Whiting, were exchanged after twenty months, in March 1865, and both died within months.

At Olustee, Florida, in February 1864, the regiment helped stall a victorious Confederate force so that General Truman Seymour could extract his shattered command, losing eight killed and more than 70 wounded. Among the wounded was Sergeant Stephen Swails, born in Columbia, Pennsylvania. Hallowell recommended him for a lieutenant’s commission and Andrew granted it, but the War Department refused to recognize it because only white men could be commissioned, relenting only after much back-and-forth. After the war Swails became a prominent attorney and newspaper editor in South Carolina, mayor of Kingstree and a state senator for ten years; he survived an assassination attempt and died at 68 in May 1900. The 54th’s last battle was Boykin’s Mill, on April 18, 1865.

The regiment received a hero’s welcome in Boston, and the men from south-central Pennsylvania went home to Carlisle, Harrisburg, Chambersburg and Mercersburg, many with scars and many without brothers. William Little, a sergeant in Company D, raised eight children, graduated from Lincoln University and became the first African American on Chambersburg’s police force; Jacob Christy helped organize the Grand Review of Black Troops in Harrisburg in November 1865. The article ends with Redkey’s judgment that the men of the 54th deserve to be remembered, and with a roster of the 124 by company, which is not reproduced here.

A Pennsylvania Historical Marker at the entrance to Zion Union Cemetery in Mercersburg, where several veterans of the 54th Massachusetts are buried (NPS Photo).

Sources

• National Park Service, South Central Pennsylvanians in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, by John D. Hoptak, Gettysburg National Military Park; the article draws on Luis Emilio's A Brave Black Regiment, Edwin Redkey's profile of the regiment and National Archives service records; rewritten in hubnx's own words.