Item contributed by Massachusetts Historical Society
After the Battle of Port Royal, the United States Army established its Headquarters of the Department of the South in Hilton Head. Here, steamers carrying regiments to the Headquarters likely docked. The 54th Massachusetts Regiment may have briefly docked here when they first arrived in South Carolina on June 3, 1863, before Colonel Robert Gould Shaw received their orders to continue to nearby Beaufort.1
This photograph is included in Captain Luis Emilio’s collection of photographs related to the regiment, now at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
1. Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment: History of The Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry 1863-1865 (Boston: The Boston Book Company, 1864), 36.
About item:
Photograph, circa 1863-1864, 8 cm x 9 cm.
From the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment photographs.
Photo. 72.91.
