Give ’em Hell 54th

It was held by many, and not just in the South, that black slaves and black freedmen could not make good soldiers.  All of human history, and American history, refuted this myth.  The sacrificial attack of the 54th Massachusetts on Fort Wagner, along with white regiments which also incurred large casualties, helped to put paid to that notion.  By the end of the War some 180,000 black troops had served in the Union army, helping to swing the balance in favor of the Union.  The failure of the Confederates, until almost the end of the War, to enlist slaves with the promise of emancipation, was probably the most important single factor in dooming the Confederacy.

In a military sense little was accomplished by the Union defeat at Fort Wagner.  In a much larger sense the battle had established that American blacks could make good soldiers.  General Howell Cobb (CSA) noted in a letter to the Confederate Secretary of War on January 8, 1865 that If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong but they won’t make soldiers.  Cobb was reacting to the proposal, supported by General Robert E. Lee, to enlist slaves, a proposal which Cobb opposed.  As John Adams noted facts are stubborn things, and all the prejudice in the world cannot withstand forever a proven fact, the fact established beyond a doubt by the valor of the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts.