re: Oh My Loooorrrddd, Lord, Lord, Looooord

Interesting segue into my ancestry. My great great grandfather was a 2nd Lt in the 2nd Charleston Battalion and was at Battery Wagner when the 54th made the assault. After the battle, Shaw was stripped of his clothes and buried with the other perished of the 54th. My grandfather purchased Shaws silk sash shortly after the battle and He had possession of it for 10 years until he returned it to Robert Shaws family in Mass..

[Another act of honor, long after the Civil War, is also noted here. Alan Wesley Muckenfuss was a defender at Fort Wagner. He had left his wife, children, and job as a teacher, to enlist in the army just after South Carolina's Secession. Due to distinguished service, Muckenfuss was promoted to Lieutenant prior to the important battle at Fort Wagner. Years after the war, Muckenfuss was First Officer of the United Confederate Veterans Chapter in Charleston. According to A Brave Black Regiment, by Luis F. Emilio, the highest ranking officer in the Mass 54th after the attack on Fort Wagner: "[Shaw's] silk sash was purchased in Battery Wagner from a private soldier, by A.W. Muckenfuss, a Confederate Officer, who, many years after, generously sent it North to Mr. S.C. Gilbert of Boston, for restoration to the Shaw family." The sash was presumably returned to Robert Gould Shaw's widow, whom never re-married.
Boston was an incubator for the abolitionist movement in the first half of the 19th century. The Museum of African American History is on Beacon Hill in the old African Meeting House. In 1832, William Lloyd Garrison established the New England Anti-Slavery Society there.]