Sculpture Honors Black Civil War Regiment St. Gaudens’ 18-Foot Work Debuts Anew
It shines, a dull gold, from its new spot in the National Gallery of Art: a detailed, carved monument to a regiment of black soldiers who fought in the Civil War to end slavery and were popularized in the movie “Glory.”
The 18-foot sculpture is the original plaster of Augustus St. Gaudens, uncovered from 25 layers of material left by restorations over the past 100 years. It opens to the public today at the National Gallery of Art.
“I hope that it will … remind us of the past we must never forget,” retired Army Gen. Colin Powell said in a speech at the gallery, “but also show us how far we have come and remind us that the struggle has to continue for a while longer.”
The sculpture shows 26-year-old Col. Robert Gould Shaw on horseback among his marching black troops. More than 20 of them, such as the colonel, are recognizable portraits of real people. An angel hovers above.
In 1863, Shaw, a member of a prominent white Boston family and already a wounded veteran, hesitated to take on the responsibility of the black regiment but accepted at the urging of his abolitionist parents.
“Now I feel ready to die,” his mother wrote, “for I see you willing to give your support to the cause of truth that is lying crushed and bleeding.”
Five months later, a bullet to the heart killed Shaw as he reached the parapet of Fort Wagner, which defended the harbor at Charleston, S.C., in a battle celebrated in the film “Glory.”
Normally, the Confederates would have given an officer separate burial, but they were reported to have stripped Shaw’s body of his uniform and thrown it into a pit with the dead black men of his command.
Survivors of the unit, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, took up a collection for a memorial to him. Their $2,832 went to found the first school for black children in Charleston.
After the war, Joshua B. Smith, a black businessman who had worked for the family, started collecting for a monument to Shaw in Boston. It took St. Gaudens, whom critics call his century’s leading sculptor, 14 years to complete.