Boston's historic 54th Regiment of black soldiers marched straight into Civil War history

A brief excerpt from a PBS documentary on the sculptor Saint-Gaudens, who created the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common. We take it for granted 364 days a year but Memorial Day seemed like a good time to stop and take a closer look. What memorials are in your town?

I don't know how many times I have walked by this statue--hundreds?--and never stopped to think much about it. It's part of the fabric of the city. We learned all about it in school. I saw the movie "Glory", which was Hollywood's version of who these people were. You probably saw it too.

I was intrigued by the horse's legs and hooves. Remember that this is a
relief sculpture. It's not exactly 3-D. It's more like 2.5-D. And hard to do.
This is the best my iPhone could record in the dark.

But the other night I stopped there at the top of Boston's Beacon Hill because I was taken with the horse and I wanted to see it close up.

It struck me that the foot soldiers are all leaning forward. But the rider and horse are not. In fact, they seem a bit hesitant. The horse's ears are back.

That's when I decided to start doing some more reading. And start forgetting Hollywood.

As soon as the Civil War began, African-American men in the North tried to enlist in the Union Army. They were turned away.

Colonel Shaw ended up in
an unmarked grave with his
fallen black soldiers.

Then it happened: it was two years into the bloody war, in 1863. Massachusetts, the hot bed home of the abolitionists, received permission from Washington to form a Black regiment.

They knew was they were up against. Confederacy policy was to enslave any captured Black soliders.

The governor of Massachusetts assured them that African American soldiers would be treated equally; they would receive the same pay and the same benefits as white recruits.

Only white men, however, could serve as officers. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the only son of one of Boston's leading abolitionist families, would lead the regiment. He was only 25 years old.

Hollywood made Americans
much more aware of the 54th.

On May 28th, the regiment was ready to fight; they marched through the streets of Boston, to the cheers of thousands of well-wishers the same way we lined the streets when the Red Sox won the World Series. This is the moment memorialized in the sculpture. They marched right to the docks and boarded ships headed south.

One of their first engagements was on July 18th at Fort Wagner, in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina.  Colonel Shaw led 600 men up the embankment. Almost half his men were killed, wounded, or captured.

Colonel Shaw was shot through the heart; the Confederates buried him in a common (unmarked) grave alongside 74 of his men.

Who were the black men who
modeled for the sculptor?

His parents said he would have wanted it that way.

The War Department, meanwhile, did not deliver on the governor's promise to the soldiers. The men of the 54th were paid only $10 per month--$3 less than the white soldiers.

So, they decided if they could not receive equal pay, they would accept no pay.

For 18 months, soldiers could send no money home. In turn, they received heartbreaking letters from their impoverished families back in Massachusetts.

Finally, in July 1864, Congress acted to give African-American soldiers the equal pay they had been promised, retroactive to the date of their enlistments.

In winter, the three-dimensional relief sculpture comes to life. They march on.

Memorial Day was declared a holiday in 1868, so that Americans would stop what they were doing and place flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers--a custom that began in Mississippi. It was called Decoration Day.

On May 31, 1897, 60 veterans of the 54th Regiment were among hundreds of people who gathered on the Common for the unveiling of the memorial. This bronze relief statue, which took the leading sculptor in the United States 14 years to create, is considered one of the greatest works of public art in the United States and was the first to portray black men in uniform.

Sculptor Saint-Gaudens' original plan was to craft a magnificent equestrian statue of Shaw--alone on his horse, on a pedestal. But Shaw's family wouldn't hear of it. Saint-Gaudens bought into their line of thinking and designed the first public sculpture to show an officer and enlisted soldiers together.

And, probably, blacks and whites together.

It was commissioned by the black citizens of Massachusetts, who raised funds to pay Saint-Gaudens. I'm just not sure why it is called the Robert Gould Shaw memorial. I hope someday I'll hear that its name will be changed to honor the whole regiment.

When it was unveiled back in 1897, people could read the names of the five white officers killed in battle; they were inscribed on the back of the monument.

It wouldn't be until 1981 that the names of the fallen black soldiers would be carved into that stone.

To learn more:

About the dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw memorial: Patrick Browne has done homework on Professor James' speech that day

Thanks to Mass Moments, a history website that inspires every day.

 

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Farrier History: Negro Ellick Shod Horses for the Confederacy in the Civil War

Today is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of one of the darkest and most painful chapters in United States history: the Civil War. Where I live, every little village has a monument to its men who died in places like Gettysburg and Antietam. The names go on and on. It makes you wonder if anyone came back at all.

I can imagine that in the southern states, the lists could be longer and it would be possible that no one returned.

As much as I read and study about the Civil War, I keep learning new things. For me, the horses are the thing of interest, and the farriers who serviced them, and the foot problems that challenged both horses and farriers.

Farriers for the Union horses were often foreign immigrants. This group looks like new arrivals: their aprons are clean and their hammers shiny.

If you have read this blog for any length of time you know that the Burden Horseshoe played a big role in turning the tide of the War in favor of the Union. Trainloads of horseshoes could leave the factory in Troy, New York and be bound for the huge remount stations or go directly to the front. Not just the cavalry but the entire artillery and the massive kitchens and quartermaster depots moved camp only the horses were shod. And those first machine-made shoes from Troy kept them all moving.

The Confederacy wasn't so lucky. They had a limited supply of iron, and it was needed for munitions as much as for horseshoes. There were no horseshoe factories in the South and orders were given for any raids on Union supply trains to go for two things: cash and horseshoes.

Until recently, I never thought much about who the farriers of the Confederacy were. I knew the Union recruiters met ships in New York and convinced farriers and blacksmiths from all nations to either enlist or to go to work as civilian government horseshoers in the remount stations.

But what about the Confederacy?

This is the enlistment paper for Ellick, an African-American who was brought into military service to work as a farrier for the Confederate States of America, even though it was not approved for white men to conscript blacks into service. This document is preserved in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

This week I learned that the laws of the Confederacy prohibited the conscription of slaves into military service. But African-Americans were there anyway, in fighting and non-fighting roles, and if authors Kevin M. Weeks and Ann DeWitt are correct, the care of the horses may have been one area where they could have been found. Just take Ellick's case.

Ellick was a farrier for the Confederacy, though he had no rank and drew no pay. It's impossible to know if he went willingly. It's quite likely that the Confederate army was desperate for farriers and experienced horsemen. Ellick may have played an important role.

Not only did the Union have new recruits with shiny hammers and unmarked aprons. They had mobile forges built on double wheel axles. In front of the forge you see here was a big bellows. The US Army designed and built these to get the farriers and the shoes to the front, where they were needed. (Library of Congress photo)

How amazing is it that the National Archives in Washington would have preserved the enlistment paper of a farrier after that war was over? This is just one example of the millions of bits of fascinating information that lies buried in those vaults of papers.

Who found Ellick? Kevin Weeks and Ann DeWitt are the authors of the new book, Entangled in Freedom: A Civil War Story. Last week their book graced the cover of Publishers Weekly's Special Independent Publishers Spring Announcement Issue. Entangled in Freedom is a young adult novel written as a first-person account of a young African-American serving with his slaveholder in the Confederate Army. The book has already won the Bonnie Blue Society Award. Ann DeWitt runs the web site www.blackconfederatesoldiers.com.

I'd like to thank them for bringing Ellick to my attention, for pulling him out of the piles of papers in the Archives, and for making him come to life. Maybe we'll never know much about Ellick but for today, he's the star farrier on the Hoof Blog and the Civil War is interesting all over again.

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 © Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.
 

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

When Upset Defeated Man o' War, A Future Governor's Family Didn't Look a Gift House in the Mouth

by Fran Jurga | 13 August 2009 | © Hoofcare Publishing

The horseshoer's great-grandson in the clubhouse at Saratoga earlier this month. Did Mr. Gibbs ever even set foot in that building, I wonder? Click here to read the New York Daily News account of Mr. Paterson's day at the races and why one of the current-day Whitney racehorses has a tongue-in-cheek link to the New York State House.

It happened 90 years ago today. Some call it the most monumental footnote in American horse racing history. Some call it the biggest mistake in the record books. Call it what you will: On August 13, 1919, a horse with the apt name of Upset scored a win against the mighty Man o’ War in the Sanford Memorial Stakes at Saratoga Racecourse. The defeat was Man o’ War's only career loss in 21 starts.

The historians love to dissect the race, partly because of its legendary botched start--was Man 'o War really facing the wrong way?--and partly because of it took place during the golden age of millionaires' racing stables. But there's more to this story. As so often is the case, there are some horseshoes buried in this legendary horse race.

From what we have learned in the past two years, it seems that the wealthy Mr. Whitney, the owner of Upset, was so pleased with his horse's victory that he rewarded his racing stable employees with real estate in some of the new housing he was building in the boroughs of New York. The crew would need to be close to his main center of operations at Belmont Park on Long Island and it would be in his interest to give them permanent homes nearby.

Among the beneficiaries was Mr. Gibbs, the blacksmith to the Whitney racing empire. He was given a home in Brooklyn, which stayed in his family for generations. And I hope he tacked a horseshoe over the door!

Someone who went in and out of that house was the great-grandson of Mr. Gibbs. Nowadays, the great-grandson goes in and out of another house, the State House of New York, where he serves as governor.

Governor David Paterson told the story of Upset, the horseshoe, and the gift house when he presented the trophy at the 2008 Belmont Stakes. He said that the gift house made a huge difference in his family's middle-class status and improved his chances for realizing education and career goals, in spite of his impaired vision.

And all because a horse named Upset needed horseshoes.

I tried to get through to Governor Paterson this week for a quote for this article about this auspicious anniversary but his aides said he was too busy. I hope he knew what day it was. He might be Upset to have missed it.

Click here to read more about Governor Paterson's link to Man o' War, and about the horseshoers who served both horses 90 years ago today. An African-American and an Irish immigrant held the all-important hooves of those two horses in their hands, and made sure they were well shod and sound to run the race of their lives--a race we're still talking about, and learning about, 90 years later!

Click here to read the original New York Times account of the race.

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