Thomas Wentworth Higginson is little known today, but during his own lifetime his remarkable activism put him at the very heart of the pivotal social movements reshaping America for the nineteenth century and beyond. Born in Cambridge, he was a fervent abolitionist, running guns to anti-slavery settlers and financing John Brown's raid. During the Civil War, he commanded the first black unit to fight for the Union, and their achievements (publicized in his classic Army Life in a Black Regiment) opened the way for further black enlistment. He also championed women's rights for...

The commanding officer chosen for the First South Carolina Volunteers was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a militant human rights activist, writer and lecturer, and former Unitarian minister. "In all the land," writes the historian Ray Allen Billington, they "could have found no one better for this assignment." Higginson was an excellent strategist and administrator who combined firmness with warmth and charm. Closely watched in the nation's press by both friends and foes of the undertaking, he soon shaped a first-class regiment Army Life in a Black Regiment is Colonel Higginson's...