Most Northerners viewed Charleston as the symbolic seat of secession and the experiments with the formation of Black Regiments with considerable interest if not universal support. Consequently, reporters documented operations in the Charleston region and the activities of the Black regiments with varying levels of detail in each side’s newspapers. Excerpts of these articles and interpretive essays to provide background and context span the history of the Regiment. They cover different topics, including the famous attack on Battery Wagner and the death of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and many of his men. Each topic includes a transcription from a Northern and a Southern paper that are related to the topic.
The papers usually revealed a clear bias according to the section they were published in, but there are some surprises for readers who may not be familiar with nineteenth-century newspapers. Racial prejudice was common to many people on both sides of the conflict. A Chicago newspaper account of enlistments for the 54th, filled with vicious stereotypes, reappeared in a Southern paper as a reinforcement of Southern beliefs in Black inferiority. Accounts of the attack on Battery Wagner with descriptions of maimed and gory bodies were not for squeamish readers. There was respect, too, for the heroic actions of Black soldiers. Taken as a sampling, the newspaper reports help readers recapture a sense of the shifting emotions of the War and the challenges of building a new society after it ended.
Articles with links to two newspaper sources:
Assassination
Battle of Olustee
Battery Wagner Assault
Charleston’s Fall
Civil War Prisoners
Colonel Shaw’s Death
Fall of Fort Sumter
Harbor Attacks
Honey Hill
Lincoln’s Re-Election
Recruiting the Regiment
Sherman’s March
Wagner’s Evacuation
Emancipation Project 