John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.

 

Every time I pass the frieze of the Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment across from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston I almost automatically focus in on that old bearded soldier who is just beneath the head of the horse being ridden by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. I do not know the details of the model Saint-Gauden’s used when he worked that section but as I grow older I appreciate the old man soldier even more. I like to think that that old brother when he heard the call in Massachusetts or wherever he was, had maybe even got the message from Frederick Douglass himself through his newspaper or on the stump he picked up stakes and volunteered forthwith. Maybe he had been born, like Douglass, in slavery and somehow, manumission, flight, something, following the Northern Star, got to the North. Maybe learned a skill, a useful skill, got a little education to be able to read and write and advance himself and had in his own way prospered. But something was gnawing at him, something about the times, about the increasing number of white folk who hated, hated with a red-hot passion, slavery and what was he a strong black man going to do about it. Maybe he still had kindred under the yolk down South in some sweated plantation, poorly fed, ill-treated, left to fester and die when not productive anymore, the women, young and old subject to Mister’s lustful appetites and he had to do something.

Then the call came, Governor Andrews of Massachusetts was raising a “sable” armed regiment (Douglass’ word) to be headed by volunteer Colonel Shaw and he shut down his small shop, said good-bye to kin and neighbors and went to Boston to join freedom’s fight. I wonder if my old bearded soldier fell before Fort Wagner fight down in heated rebel country, or maybe fell in some other engagement less famous but just as important to the concept of disciplined armed black men fighting freedom’s fight. I like to think thought that the grizzled old man used every bit of wit and skill he had and survived to march into Charleston, South Carolina, the fire-breathing heart of the Confederacy, then subdued at the end of war with his fellows in the 54^th stepping off to the tune of John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering In The Grave. A fitting tribute to Brown and to an old man’s honor.