The Fifty-fourth did well and nobly; only the fall of Col. Shaw prevented them from entering the fort. They moved up as gallantly as any troops could, and, with their enthusiasm, they deserved a better fate.
Sergeant-major Lewis H. Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass, the celebrated orator, sprang upon the parapet close behind Col. Shaw, and cried out, “Come, boys, come, let’s fight for God and Governor Andrew.” This brave young man was the last to leave the parapet. Before the regiment reached the parapet, the color-sergeant was wounded; and, while in the act of falling, the colors were seized by Sergt. William H. Carney, who bore them up, and mounted the parapet, where he, too, received three severe wounds. But, on orders being given to retire, the color-bearer, though almost disabled, still held the emblem of liberty in the air, and followed his regiment by the aid of his comrades, and succeeded in reaching the hospital, where he fell exhausted and almost lifeless on the floor, saying, “The old flag never touched the ground, boys.” Capt. Lewis F. Emilio, the junior captain,—all of his superiors having been killed or wounded,—took command, and brought the regiment into camp. In this battle, the total loss in officers and men, killed and wounded, was two hundred and sixty-one.
When John Brown was led out of the Charlestown jail, on his way to execution, he paused a moment, it will be remembered, in the passage-way, and, taking a little colored child in his arms, kissed and blessed it. The dying blessing of the martyr will descend from generation to generation; and a whole race will cherish for ages the memory of that simple caress, which, degrading as it seemed to the slaveholders around him, was as sublime and as touching a lesson, and as sure to do its work in the world’s history, as that of Him who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.”
When inquiry was made at Fort Wagner, under flag of truce, for the body of Col. Shaw of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, the answer was, “We have buried him with his niggers!” It is the custom of savages to outrage the dead, and it was only natural that the natives of South Carolina should attempt to heap insult upon the remains of the brave young soldier; but that wide grave on Morris Island will be to a whole race a holy sepulchre. No more fitting burial-place, no grander obsequies, could have been given to him who cried, as he led that splendid charge, “On, my brave boys!” than to give to him and to them one common grave. As they clustered around him in the fight: as they rallied always to the clear ring of his loved voice; as they would have laid down their lives, each and all of them, to save his; as they honored and reverenced him, and lavished on him all the strong affections of a warm-hearted and impulsive people: so when the fight was over, and he was found with the faithful dead piled up like a bulwark around him, the poor savages did the only one fitting thing to be done when they buried them together. Neither death nor the grave has divided the young martyr and hero from the race for which he died; and a whole people will remember in the coming centuries, when its new part is to be played in the world’s history, that “he was buried with his niggers!”
They buried him with his niggers!”
Together they fought and died.
There was room for them all where they laid him
(The grave was deep and wide),
For his beauty and youth and valor,
Their patience and love and pain;