Civil War

This Week in the Civil War

00000174-b11b-ddc3-a1fc-bfdbb1a20000The Schreiner University Department of History is honoring the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War with a series of short vignettes focusing on events from 1861 through 1865. The Civil War was the most destructive conflict in American history, but it was also one of our most defining moments as a people and as a nation. Let us know what you think about "This Week in the Civil War." E-mail your comments to Dr. John Huddleston at jhuddles@schreiner.edu.Airs: Weekdays at 5:19 a.m., 8:19 a.m., 4:19 p.m. on KTXI and 4:49 a.m., 9:29 p.m. on KSTX.

This Week in the Civil War - 501

Texas Public Radio | By Texas Public Radio

Published February 7, 2013 at 12:19 PM CST

On February 7, 1863, Second Lieutenant John Whittier Messer Appleton became the first white officer commissioned to serve with the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry. Led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and memorialized in the film Glory, the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry consisted of approximately 1,100 free black men recruited mostly from the North.

The regiment included among its ranks two sons from freed slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. After training through the spring of 1863, the 54^th paraded through downtown Boston on May 28, before embarking to Charleston.

On that day, Massachusetts Governor Andrew declared that he could not name another moment in history when a thousand men in arms had been “committed to a work at once so proud, so precious, [and] so full of hope and glory.”