In August Saint-Gaudens’s masterpiece, Colonel Robert Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Infantry march perpetually southwards towards their impending faith on the sandy shores on Morris Island, South Carolina. The monument recalls the 28th day in May 1863 when “one thousand men strode with swaying steps and swinging flags through the streets of Boston and into glory.” Col. Shaw riding his horse with his back straighten and eyes firmly affixed towards their final resting place. The drummer boys tapping a marching cadence to the men, and the men’s voices “sang out their vow that John Brown’s body might be a-mould’ring in the grave,” they would carry on their shoulders the weight of millions of still enslaved individuals. In the fall
