I would also like to emphasize this one other point made in the Tennessee thread:

The other poster contended that free blacks were seen as "traitors" to the south, and therefore criminals, even if these men were residents of Northern states and had never been slaves. (Rememebr that a free black had been killed at the Boston Massacre. His offspring would never have owed allegience to the secessionist states.) I contended it would be impossible to be a "traitor" to any government that did not consider that person to be a citizen of the government, just as any US citizen living in Italy is not a citizen of Italy by reason of residency alone, and therefore could not commit "treason" against a country in which he did not actually hold citizenship. US citizens living abroad can be counted as residents in the population but never as citizens of that foreign country.

I further emphazised that the southern states counted blacks as fractionally human for their population counts for congressional representation but not as citizens. Mr Hodge advised me to read the Constitution, but that is the exact article, section, and paragraph I was referring to in my comment about southern black population status vs their citizenship status. They were not citizens.

Two more quick points about citizenship: Georgia explicitly said that a negro could never be a citizen of the United States as did Justice Taney in Dred Scott:

Taney's opinion stated that Negroes, even free Negroes, were not citizens of the United States, and that therefore Scott, as a Negro, did not even have the privilege of being able to sue in a federal court. They had no rights a white man need recognize.

Therefore, not being citizens, blacks, whether soldiers or not, could never be legally considered as "traitors" to the south. If they were ever considered as traitors it would automatically confer upon them the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The soldiers and officers of the 54th Massachusetts were not considered traitors as the other poster said, but were indeed considered criminals as Bryan has shown.

Their burial therefore was deliberately meant to confer upon them the status and dignity not of free men, citizens and soldiers but of nothing more than common criminals. They were not buried with honor. The manner of their burial in a mass grave at Fort Wagner was not due to expediency like mass graves may have been at other battle sites for men and officers KIA, but it was a deliberate statement of intential disgrace and dishonor. even easily identified officers were thrown into the pit of iniquity.

Up north, in Boston, this act meant, to be a mean personal insult and an outrage to Shaw, was considered an honor to him, and to also confer equality to the blacks buried with him.