Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America by Douglas R. Egerton (review)

To many Americans, the African American Civil War military experience begins and ends with the story of a single black Massachusetts regiment as told in the movie Glory. Ironically, the movie does not record the military experience of all black regiments organized by Massachusetts officials, or even cover the entire war. Massachusetts recruited and organized three “colored” regiments. The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry, which the movie implies was destroyed in the climactic final battle, went on to be an enormously successful regiment that would fight again in places such as Olustee, Florida. Similarly, the Bay State recruited and fielded the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Infantry and the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry; these units served in crucial campaigns in the war’s last years. Douglas R. Egerton, professor of history at Le Moyne College, chronicles the story of all three regiments and their members—from their muster into service until the war’s end and beyond—in Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America, cowinner of the 2017 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

While historians have explored a number of aspects of the black military experience in the Civil War, this is the first time that these three regiments have been examined in a single volume. Egerton believes these regiments were critical because “virtually all Americans—white and black, Confederate and Unionist, Republican and Democrat—understood that the three black regiments were to serve as a test case.” If these “soldiers succeed[ed] and [fought] brilliantly, that would open the door for other Northern states to begin recruiting African Americans.” If these men failed and lived down to the expectations of their detractors, “that performance would not only put an end to the experiment but set off repercussions for American society for generations to come” (7). It was the action of these men that “transform[ed] a white man’s war into a revolutionary struggle for freedom” (9). Much of the fate of what began as a white man’s war rested in black hands.

Examining three Civil War regiments may seem like a daunting task, but Egerton made it more manageable by focusing on fourteen men—black and white soldiers, officers and enlisted men. According to Egerton, “Some had been born into slavery, and others were sons of privilege. Most survived the conflict, and some did not” (8). He begins their stories before the war and continues into the postwar era and on into the twentieth century. The best known of the fourteen men was Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry, who died in the assault on Fort Wagner but found immortality in poetry. The title of Egerton’s book, Thunder at the Gates, was inspired by the poem “Robert Gould Shaw,” written by the famous poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose father served in the Fifty-Fifth. Lesser-known white officers include Philadelphians and brothers Edward Needles Hallowell, who commanded the Fifty-Fourth after Shaw’s death, and Norwood Penrose Hallowell, who took charge of the Fifty-Fifth. The lesser-known Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry was commanded by Charles Francis Adams Jr., who descended from both U.S. presidents named Adams. Though Frederick Douglass’s sons belonged to the unit, Egerton’s success in re-creating the life of the common African American soldier in these units—former waiters, laborers, and escaped slaves—represents one of the most valuable contributions of this study, adding to the history and memory of the black military experience.

Yet this magnificent narrative history is more than a valuable contribution to the historiography of the black soldier. It is an absorbing and tremendously moving story that will likely attract a broad readership. The reader becomes totally absorbed in the lives and deaths of these fourteen men and their comrades.

In light of the work’s importance, I propose focusing on what might be done in future studies. Egerton does...