See a plaster version of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s revolutionary memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the first African American regiments formed in the North.
The regiment is renowned for their bravery in the storming of Fort Wagner, a critical battle of the American Civil War. The assault resulted in the deaths of nearly a third of the regiment’s soldiers. However, their heroism and sacrifice marked an inspirational turning point for the antislavery cause.
Two decades later, the family of the 54th Regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, commissioned Augustus Saint-Gaudens to make this memorial. Saint-Gaudens labored for more than a decade to create a revolutionary work. Although the artist remained true to the rules of military formation in depicting Colonel Shaw on horseback, he also created empathetic portraits of African Americans, young and old, to represent the soldiers who joined the fight against slavery.
