"To commemorate Black History Month, we celebrate the story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first African American unit of the U.S. Army. These brave men served honorably during U.S. Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in the middle of the war, signaling that the war for union was also a war for freedom and the abolition of the institution of slavery.
The Proclamation most notably freed slaves in the rebellious states. However, an additional provision is often overlooked: it authorized the U.S. Army and Navy to receive African American men “of suitable condition” into their ranks.
Shortly thereafter, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton authorized Massachusetts Governor John Andrews to call for volunteers for an all-black infantry regiment. He received help from a number of Massachusetts men and women, many of whom were abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips, to recruit hundreds of African American men for the regiment."
