Of the colored soldiers who joined the Union effort, more than 5,000 were recruited from the state of South Carolina, comprising the enlisted ranks of six infantry regiments ( 21st | 33rd | 34th | 103rd | 104th and 128th ) and one artillery battery ( Battery "G", 2nd Light Artillery Regiment). The 105th Infantry Regiment did not completely formed before the end of the war and was quickly disbanded.

Perhaps no regiment was more symbolic of the participation and contribution of African Americans to the War effort than the 1st South Carolina Colored Infantry, a contingent of slaves from the harsh, back- breaking farms of the coastal Low Country regions of the state. South Carolina was a state that was steeped in the practice of slavery, whose very existence and wherewithal were built on and dependent upon one man's involuntary servitude to another. Indeed, South Carolina, perhaps more so than the other southern states, was synonymous with the slave trade, the plantation system and the inequality of the races. From Columbia to Charleston to Hilton Head, South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union, was the essence of Dixie.