Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The South Atlantic Coast, 1861–1863 45
furnished 294, New York 183, and Ohio 155. The nationally famous abolitionist author
and orator Frederick Douglass encouraged enlistment, and two of his sons served in the
regiment. Capt. Robert G. Shaw of the 2d Massachusetts, a veteran of nearly two years’
service that included several battles, would lead the new regiment. Governor Andrew
had the 54th organized, armed, and aboard ship for South Carolina by the end of May. 54
On 5 June, the 2d South Carolina embarked for St. Simon’s Island. From there,
boats took the men fifteen miles up the Turtle River, where they dismantled part of a
railroad bridge but found that the trestle was too waterlogged to burn. On 9 June, the
54th Massachusetts arrived on St. Simon’s. Two days later, accompanied by the 2d
South Carolina, the new regiment steamed up the Altamaha River on its first expedition.
“We saw many Rice fields along the shores and quite a number of alligators,”
Capt. John W. M. Appleton of the 54th Massachusetts recalled. “The water was so
charged with soil as to give it an orange color. We kept running aground,” and Appleton
found himself sometimes at the head of the squadron, sometimes in its rear. At Darien,
near the river’s mouth, they captured a forty-ton schooner loaded with cotton, which
they sent back to Port Royal Sound. 55
Montgomery ordered the troops to “take out anything that can be made useful in
camp.” Besides poultry and livestock, they gathered furnishings from private residences.
“Some of our officers got very nice carpets,” an officer of the 54th Massachusetts
wrote home. Then, despite the entire lack of armed resistance, Montgomery decided to
burn Darien. The glare of the flames could be seen on St. Simon’s Island fifteen miles
away. Colonel Shaw protested the order, and only one company of his regiment took
part in the arson. 56
Higginson had suspected from the start that Montgomery’s “system of drill & discipline
may be more lax & western than mine.” After four months of observation, Higginson
wrote: “Montgomery’s raids are dashing, but his brigand practices I detest and
condemn. . . . I will have none but civilized warfare in my reg[imen]t.” In June, the same
month in which Higginson deplored “brigand practices,” General Hunter felt obliged
to send Montgomery a copy of the War Department’s General Orders 100, issued that
spring, which published “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United
States in the Field.” The legal scholar Francis Lieber had prepared “Instructions” as
a code of conduct for U.S. soldiers. It distinguished, for instance, between partisans
(uniformed troops operating behind enemy lines), guerrillas, and “armed prowlers.”
Hunter called Montgomery’s “particular attention” to sections of the “Instructions”
headed “Military necessity—Retaliation,” “Public and private property of the enemy,”
who chaired the Senate Military Affairs Committee, worked together, see James W. Geary, We
Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991),
pp. 16–31.
54 Edwin S. Redkey, “Brave Black Volunteers: Profile of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts
Regiment,” in Hope and Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment,
ed. Martin H. Blatt et al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001): 21–34, p. 24 (statistics).
55 J. W. M. Appleton Jnl photocopy, p. 22 (quotation), MHI; Anglo-African, 27 June 1863.
56 Appleton Jnl, p. 23 (“take out”); Russell Duncan, Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel
Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1999), p. 94 (“Some of”); Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment: History of the Fifty-fourth
Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (New York: Arno Press, 1969 [1894]), pp. 42–44.
Emilio was captain of the regiment’s Company E and a participant in most of the events he described.