Talk:54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment/Archives/2014/April

Usage of African-American

I think that due to the tense in which the article is written, it is appropriate or at least possible to use African-American because we are looking back at the history, not writing in the present. Also another term that could be used is 'colored'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChaseBB (talk • contribs) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

black vs. african american vs. negro

Not to sound politically correct, but is there any reason to use the term 'negro' when not directly quoting a source? If the argument can be made that the term is appropriate given the historical context of the article (and I don't think it can), I would at the very least suggest that one term is used consistently. Toscaesque 05:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC) From foxtale; Toscaesque, please note that during the Civil War the term 'colored' was affixed to units to designate inclusion of people of color (not just African-Americans.) The term Negro is still used today in historical context such as United Negro College Fund, as is Colored, as in National Association for Advancement of Colored People, and also People of Color is gaining prominence in oratory.

there were "AFRICAN AMERICANS" at this time in history because blacks were americans.

You may be confusing the difference between U.S. citizens (which the Dred Scot decision covered) and Americans. In any event, it is appropriate to use modern terms in modern encyclopedia entries. We are writing for 21st-century readers, not 19th. Hal Jespersen 19:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I changed the quote "we have buried him with his blacks," to what was actually said. I hate this word, but we cannot censor the racist remark. I cited the source, but it is not in the normal wiki format. If someone wants to change this, that would be appreciated. Clarkseth 00:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

"we cannot censor the racist remark". Too right. History without its warts is simply not history, it is propaganda at the very least. Malangthon 22:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I havewatched the movie GLORY go watch it NOW

Yes, some terms used earlier on such as "coloured" and others are insensitive and not really used much today. If they are used 1) in historical context, 2) when quoting or 3) using names like the NAACP, then I don't see an issue. So whilst it is racist to speak to people today with terms like "coloured", that is your opinion that it should not be quoted in historical context, and historians do not follow that method. Historians use what evidence is there, racist or not. Why would we "censor the racist remark" if we are meerly quoting it in context? We are not promoting it ourselves, but showing what the terminology was in 1863, provided it is done w/ that as the objective, not to promote racism (which IS a problem in these articles). With Clarkseth and Toscaesque's logic, we would have to censor quite a lot instead of allowing the reader to make a judgement. Why not just start w/ the Declaration of Independence? It's far more racist. Jefferson calls Native Americans "merciless Indian savages", but it was Jefferson who promoted racism, not the wikipedia editor who simply tells others what Jefferson said. It's you who celebrate that every year, so there's a bit of hypocrasy in this. Anyway there is a big difference between promoting racism/selling racist memorabilia from the Civil War and simply quoting a racist comment one of these people in 1863 made in context, showing his feelings/racism. Remember, many of these people were unashamed white supremacists, owned slaves & took part in the Genocide of the Native American people, so why would you be suprised they spoke that way? I'd be suprised if they did not speak that way.

Oh, and the movie Glory is just that, I hope people aren't making edits based that.Ebanony (talk) 11:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

truly awful writing

Who wrote this pap in paragraph 5?: "These mobs directed their animosity toward blacks because they felt the Civil War was caused by them. However, the bravery of the 54th would help to assuage anger of this kind, although African-Americans would continue to suffer from discrimination for many years."

A nod to the gods of . . . What?

If this were a legitmate entry it should at least provide some means of actually understanding what was possibly mitigated and how it was mitigated. And this, 'although . . . continue to suffer"? This is just really bad prose, high school text-book stuff the likes of which the most self-righteous history book censors would approve in issues less than encomiastic. Malangthon 22:26, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Statistics

Hi,

I read about the 270 dead, but how many men were in the regiment in total? And was 270 a high percentage or a relatively low one?

Robin.lemstra

At their peak the 54th had around 950 enlisted and 29 officers. This was close to a full compliment which was 1000. The 54th was actually far less hard hit with casualties than many who saw comprable service. They suffered 270 casualties total. When the 1st Minnesota Infantry charged at Gettysburg that was about how many men they had present and they too started out at near the 1000 figure. Sometimes regiments in the Civil War held a front of only 50 meters or less because they had less than 200 men. The 54th also lost far fewer to disease than some regiments did. All in all they lost fewer than they probably should have. (For instance, they could have been uterly destroyed at Olustee but instead they were the rock that allowed Seymour to retire in good order.) That among other things speaks to their caliber as soldiers.Tuelj (talk) 19:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I would like to point out that the entire 54th was not at the Battle of Olustee. A part of the unit was left behind to garrison Barber's Plantation, a supply point between that battlefield and Jacksonville. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 18:19, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Chronology or Inaccurate Info

I see that this article has been selected for rewriting. One consideration I would like to suggest is that currently the chronology seems out of whack or the article is not worded well regarding LTC Hallowell. In the third paragraph, it states that Hallowell was promoted into the 55th Mass., but seems for the rest of the article to be serving with the 54th Mass., which he later commands. I'm not sure what the truth is, but it's confusing right now. CsikosLo (talk) 13:07, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There were two Hallowells, brothers Norwood Penrose (Pen) Hallowell and Edward Needles Hallowell. Part of the text has been vandalized. If this site weren't such a frequent target of vandals that would still be in there. I'll fix it.Tuelj (talk) 21:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Quoting Robert Lowell's poem

The correct quote for the Lowell poem (as uncomfortable as it may make us feel) not only cites the letter mentioned, but the current quote also leaves out lines and words:

Shaw's father wanted no monument except the ditch where his son's body was thrown and lost with his "niggers."

(quotation marks in the original poem - Lowell was not a bigott)

87.51.132.174 (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree and I intend to change this. Quotes are just that quotes. Lowell did not write his poem as a racist; but even if this were so the quote, if used, must be faithfully rendered. The point of an encyclopedic approach is being lost sometimes with people who want to promote a certain perspective. This is fine in political histories or social histories in which a point of view is stated at the outset and the reader knows to expect interpretations from a certain point of view.

However, Wikipedia strives for neutrality. In history this requires an empiricist approach to the historiography of articles and the work as a whole. This entails determining the historicity (verifiable through objective and authenticatable data)of all material and including faithful renderings of that which can be verified or specific disclaimers (also citing the source) of unverifiable facts. This so called "empiricist history" is a school coming out of the Annales School (wiki has an article on it) of the early twentieth century. The empiricist school is popular with a lot of us military historians, both armature and professional. Some of us call it "The Dragnet School of History," because like Detective Joe Friday we seek, "Just the facts, Mam."

Histories have been full of apocrypha, polemics and just general laxness of scholarship for centuries. There is a lot of truth in the saying that "the victors write the history." An empiricist history is sometimes controversial--that is unavoidable when you include data about people behaving badly. But that is the history of man--people behaving badly and people behaving nobly. Empiricist history throws both out coldly and accurately. It is sometimes therefore very dry and of limited usefulness to a social or political history except as a starting point. But that is the point. It makes no judgments; it merely says what we can verify happened and what people may say happened and did not or what they say can not be verified.

I verified the quote very easily on five internet sources. It needs to be changed. I intend to do it and fight to have it stay that way. I think a lot of folks agree that accuracy, however uncomfortable it makes us feel is too important to do otherwise. Or soon you get idiots saying things like the holocaust of WWII never happened. I think collectively the world is better than that. I think as a whole we realize that the way to do in use of nasty epithets like "nigger" or "mick" or anything else is to admit that they were used in the past and to show that "here is the damage they helped do when they were used."Tuelj (talk) 13:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Tired of the Vandalism and Undiscussed Changes

I don't think I personally am going to try to improve this article anymore. It is vandalized about every other day and significant sections like the pay controversy section are arbitrarily deleted without discussion. The 54th was at the center of unequal pay and other issues regarding African-American troops. For instance there are probably three or four relevant paragraphs on the issue of the 54th's leadership trying to get higher rank for their enlisted troops, trying to secure the appointment of an African-American surgeon, etc. But I give up. It's not worth trying to improve an article when you are constantly undoing vandalism and taking several stepps back.Tuelj (talk) 17:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

As material continues to get hacked away and work that various people (not only myself) have done dissapears, including, notably, almost everyone's past references I realize that Wikipedia is when all is said and done, a bad idea that will only serve to generate probably millions of bad papers, articles and projects that are full of errors and shortcomings.Tuelj (talk) 16:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

In addtion to the presumably well-meaning "edits", this artcle has to be the most vandalized of all the 500+ pages I have contributed to that I track, all too much of it racially based. It is appalling. Tuelj, I feel your pain. Scromett (talk) 19:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Please do not give up. As an entomologist with the University of Florida I have somewhat "adopted" the page on the lovebug. During the two, four to six week periods that the lovebug adult is out, that page is vandalized every day. I go in, check my watch list, and hit the "undo" link. I am Webmaster for the Battle of Olustee Web site which has won some honors, including a Congressional Black Caucus award for its treatment of the three colored regiments that fought there. I've added this page to my watch list, made some additions and changes and, hopefully, will be adding more later. Our Web statistics show that the #1 search term used to access our site is different variations of "54th Massachusetts." Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 00:07, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

If this page is regularly vandalized, perhaps you could apply for semi-protection. See Wikipedia:Rough guide to semi-protection. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 02:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what draws vandals to the 54th, but it does indeed get tiring. I have some 50+ regiments on my watch list, and this is the only one that gets hit frequently. The27thmaine (talk) 21:40, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are people out there who would rather the 54th never existed. We won't go into why. Reminds me of a guy I met at a MD's office who was telling people that the Afro-American pilots in Europe during WW II were such cowards they flew away any time German fighters showed up and his squadron was told to shoot them down if they ran. I asked if there was some great historical conspiracy that had the Afro-American pilots never losing a bomber they escorted. After that others pitched in also and the @#$%^ racist shut his mouth. Same sort of thing here, some jerks can't accept the fact there is a page on the 54th, so they vandalize it. I was editing some text today - actually just adding an "additional reading" book to the Robert E. Lee page. The page is semi-protected in that it does not allow non-registered users to edit it. This might be a good idea for this page. Since the proof is in the page history, request such a protection. Maybe that will keep most of the vandals out. I don't know who to request this from as I am still a relative new comer to WP. Maybe I'll check under HELP. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 22:50, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I looked under Vandalism and found this link: Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection. Since you have had the experience of fighting the vandalism on this page, why not read it then provide the necessary documentation (page history, your experiences, etc.) for whatever protection you think is necessary. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 22:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I applied for semi-protection, but it was declined, saying there was not enough recent vandalism. The27thMaine (talk) 12:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Entirely of African Americans?

The officers weren't, but were all of the NCOs? Hcobb (talk) 04:36, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Racism, perhaps unintentional

I impute no bad motives to the following sentence in the introduction.

"The regiment was one of the first official black units in the United States armed forces."

However, I changed it to "The regiment was one of the first official black units in the United States armed forces during the Civil War."

Why the change? For the simple reason that some may think that there were no blacks fighting in the Revolution or the War of 1812, when in fact many thousands fought on both sides (with most fighting against the Americans in the Revolution for obvious reasons). In some of the other articles dealing w/ the 54th Regiment, there were statements like "blacks proved themselves in battle" and others that made it seem like black people were somehow incapable of war, and outright ignoring thousands of years of history long before the Europeans landed in the Americas, in which blacks fought ie Africa. Some racists in the past made these claims, but we need not repeat them. The very idea that blacks have to prove themselves or that 1 person goes on trial for the rest of black people is so downright racist in itself that it's striking people don't notice it. So the intro sentence was just not clear, but I'm making this edit because of what was in the other articles on this topic.Ebanony (talk) 11:35, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Introduction

I've changed the following sentences in the introduction:

"Frederick Douglass helped to bring African American troops to the Union Army, and his good relationship with President Lincoln helped convince the President to make emancipation a cause of the Civil War. Two of Douglass' sons served in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, which was made up entirely of African American volunteers."

1) Douglass did help recruit, but this should be in a section dealing with the formation/recruiting of the regiment, not the intro which should be brief, particularly the part of Douglass' sons serving, that's interesting but not good for this part of the article

2) "and his good relationship with President Lincoln helped convince the President to make emancipation a cause of the Civil War"

This, though copied directly from the US Park Service website, has some problems, and there are far better sources available. 1) The war was declared in 1861, and the reasons were pretty clear, they did not change, and they were not to end slavery; 2) this, even if worded differently, doesn't address the issue of how emancipation was used as a recruitment tool anyway, and IF that is the goal, fine, do it accurately and not in the intro paragraph. So yes, one of the unintended consequences of the war was emancipation and the recruitment of blacks in the army, but that's not quite the same as a cause, regardless of what that site says. Using blacks to help end slavery later on w/ recruitment (after the Emancipation Proc) one can make an argument for, because it was an incentive to fight they had not had prior, and Douglass didn't do it, he and many others pressured Lincoln, and there were other considerations that forced Lincoln to do it.

Seperate, though I addressed this with an earlier and explained it below under "Racism, Perhaps Unintentional" The 54th was not, as the article says, the 1st black regiment in the Civil War. I've added that - since many are apparantly unaware of this - that many blacks fought in the Am Revolution and the War of 1812 (on both British & US sides). Why? Because it was too easy to get the impression that blacks fighting in US wars was somehow new; it wasn't, and if people want to bring attention to the contribution African Americans made, then they should do just that, not ignore everything blacks did before 1863. Ebanony (talk) 00:26, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

There appears to be some vandalism on the article. Currently in the info box; they type says "cavery, the number says 11, the march says "marching slowley", Mascot says "monkeys", Equipment says "spears", Decorations says "kill every man and every dog in the nation", and Colonel of the Regiment says "jack wagon". --Junedragon3 (talk) 02:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the good eyes. Has been reverted. BusterD (talk) 03:37, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"Black soldiers"

Whoever is doing this, please stop bowlderizing quotations. You absolutely cannot just change direct quotations like that.

I am sorry about that word. It of course a very hurtful word. But what you are doing makes no sense in context, and contradicts WP:NOTCENSORED. TiC ^(talk) 20:02, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

The use of the word "glory"

I'm trying to sort out what the following might refer to:

Years after the film was made, it came to light that the word Glory was used by one of the men of the regiment.

So far, I've come up with the following

1. There was a ceremony when Governor Andrew presented the American flag to the 54th regiment. Throughout his speech he mentions the word "glory" several times, particularly at the close of his speech:

After speaking about others who have fought, Andrew says: "Inspired by such examples, fired by the head and light of love and faith which illumined and warmed these heroic and noble hearts, may you, sir, and these march on to glory, to victory, and to every honor!

2. Luis F. Emilio, captain of the 54th and author of "A Brave Black Regiment" wrote:

Were we to join the armies of the NOrth we a prospect of military glory and its accompanying danger, or to be doomed to comparative inaction in the Department of the South, depleted of its troops?

3. There are also references to "old glory", some of which is likely tied to William Harvey Carney and the "legends of the regiment" being written on the stripes of the flag.

4. Something else?

Does anyone have a sense of what that sentence refers to - or which angle we should take?--CaroleHenson (talk) 23:43, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

You've done alot of work on this. My assumption was always that it was someone's Original Research (an after-the-fact attempt to validate the title of the movie with the actual historical figures) and that the sentence should just be removed. But I never got around to it. Since you didn't find a definitive answer, I think I'll stick with my original opinion - it should just be deleted. Ckruschke (talk) 17:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke

Yep, I've already removed that statement because it was so unclear what it referred to - and figured that a clearer statement could be added back to the article if it was sorted out on this talk page.

I did add a quote about glory from Governor Andrew Of the regiment, Governor John A. Andrew: "I know not where, in all human history, to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory." It seems at this point nothing more needs to be done. Thanks for your input!--CaroleHenson (talk) 17:42, 1 May 2013 (UTC)