Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Memorial

The Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Memorial faces the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Street, at the edge of Boston Common in Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens worked on the bronze relief for fourteen years, and it was unveiled in 1897 with the architect Charles Follen McKim designing the setting. The relief shows Colonel Shaw on horseback, with the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry marching beside him and an allegorical angel above. Saint-Gaudens used local Black men as models, and individualized the faces of the soldiers, a notable departure for monuments of the period. The 54th was organized in 1863 under Governor John Andrew, with recruits from across the free states, including sons of Frederick Douglass. On 18 July 1863, the regiment led the assault on Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Shaw and many of his men were killed, and the unit's courage helped change Northern views and spurred further Black enlistment. The story was dramatized in the 1989 film Glory, and the poem by Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead, refers to the memorial. For years the monument named only Shaw. The names of the 62 enlisted men who died at Fort Wagner were added in 1982, through restoration efforts. The monument underwent major conservation in 1981 and in the 1990s to clean the bronze and the stone. Today the bronze relief and its Georgian Revival granite frame are a National Park Service site, part of the Boston African American National Historic Site. Interpretation is through inscriptions, including a verse by James Russell Lowell, and ranger talks at the nearby Museum of African American History. A stop here takes about 10 to 15 minutes. It is on the Black Heritage Trail and the Freedom Trail.