Editorial July 11, 1994 Issue

Abolishing mental slavery

William E. Moody

What was the day like—May 28, 1863? For the citizens of Boston, it was certainly no ordinary day. As historian Russell Duncan writes, "The largest crowd in the city's history assembled on Essex and Beacon streets, leaned from balconies, waved from windows, ran out to touch or praise, and surrounded the reviewing stands around the State House and in the Common to cheer ...."

One thousand troops, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, were receiving tribute as they headed south to join in the Union's struggle against the Confederacy. Although the Civil War itself had been raging for more than two years, the Emancipation Proclamation received President Lincoln's official signature only five months earlier. And it was Lincoln's action to end slaveholding in the United States that had finally set the stage for this remarkable event in the city of Boston.

The ranks of proud soldiers who were marching that day through the Common constituted the first regiment of African Americans to be mustered into combat. The significance? Again, in Duncan's estimation, these courageous individuals now had the opportunity to take their own place in history as they carried forth the "vision of black men redeeming them-selves from 250 years of slavery."^{See Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, ed. by Russell Duncan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), pp. xi, xv, and 1 .}

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