The First South Carolina Volunteers was a Union Army regiment during the American Civil War. It was composed of escaped slaves from South Carolina and Florida. There had been previous attempts to form black units in New Orleans and Kansas, but they were not officially recognized. The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, whose exploits are memorialized in the film Glory, was formed afterwards and drew from free Northern blacks. Col. Higginson, a minister, author and abolitionist, documented the Gullah dialect spoken by the men and made a record of the spirituals that they sang.