Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment departs from Boston.

After taking the train in from Readville, the troops march past the State House before a crowd of some 20,000 spectators. The first free, African-American, Northern regiment in the Civil War, it includes more than 1,007 enlisted men (27 from Boston) and 37 white officers, led by Robert Gould Shaw. The troops then proceed to Battery Wharf and board the DeMolay for a trip to the South. John Greenleaf Whittier later describes Shaw as, “The very flower of grace and chivalry . . . beautiful and awful, as an angel of God.” But The Pilot complains that “One Southern regiment of white men could put twenty regiments of them to flight in half an hour.” The troops engage in their first battle in July 1863.* A memorial to the regiment is dedicated in 1897.*