Mount Pleasant, SC

Reenactors in the impression of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment at Boone Hall Plantation. 2013

Boone Hall Planation, now a tourist destination outside The City of Charleston, has been a working farmstead for over three centuries. Complete with slave cabins, the plantation is an example of the wealth gained through slave labor and is part of the legacy of South Carolina’s Civil War history.

In 1863 the national government began recruiting former slaves and free-black men to join the ranks of the Union Army. Termed the US Colored Troops, these newly formed regiments were strictly segregated and were commanded by white officers.

The US Colored Troops, namely the Massachusetts 54th, proved their metal in the war at the Battle for Fort Wagner on Morris Island in Charleston Harbor in July 1863. Made famous in the Hollywood film, Glory, the 54th stormed the impregnable fort and fought desperately only to be driven back by the Confederate defenders of the bastion.

The dead from the battle, including Robert G. Shaw, the regiment’s commanding officer, were buried in mass graves outside the fort in the days after the engagement.

Over the years, the storms that rage around South Carolina’s coast washed away the fort and all the mass graves of the soldiers that died there. Today Morris Island is completely uninhabited and accessible only by private boat.

Image and text by Michael Falco