Members of two Civil War reenactment groups walked the hot sands of Morris Island recently to observe the 160th anniversary of the Union Army’s failed attack on Battery Wagner.
On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first unit of Black volunteer soldiers formed during the war, led the unsuccessful assault that is depicted in the 1989 movie Glory.
Shortly after the movie’s debut Black reenactment groups, one in Charleston and another in Washington, D.C., were among the many that formed across the nation to pay homage to the 54th Massachusetts.
In Charleston, Joseph McGill Jr. was one of the founding members of 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Company I. McGill recalled that the group was living historians who slung reproduction-model rifles over their shoulders to remember the Black Union troops. In Washington, Calvin Osborne and Anthony Jones joined the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment Company B for the same reason.
On Morris Island at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, Osborne and Jones, both of Washington, D.C., stood in formation with Company I member Terry James of Florence as he belted Oh Freedom! “Before I’d be a slave I’d be buried in my grave.”
Osborne, a D.C. attorney who joined Company B four years after it was founded in 1993, said when he saw the movie Glory “it blew me away. I didn’t know this history existed and the sacrifice they made to free [enslaved people] and save the Union.”
Jones, a retired postal worker, said remembering the battle is “important because this aspect of American history is being omitted” from some public schools.
James said when he visits Morris Island his thoughts are on the 1,515 Union soldiers who died on the island and “didn’t live long enough to have children to carry on their legacy.”
During the attack, 174 Confederate soldiers were killed.
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