Gallops Island During Civil War

Gallops Island was the site of a training camp and a mustering out camp (for discharging soldiers from service) for Union soldiers. The most famous regiment discharged from Gallops Island was the Fifty-Fourth Regiment Massachusetts Infantry, the African-American regiment led by white abolitionist Colonel Robert Gould Shaw whose soldiers included two sons of the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The story of the Fifty-Fourth and its heroic assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863, has been dramatically portrayed in the movie “Glory.” The discharge of Civil War soldiers is described in African Americans and the Boston Harbor Islands.