The 54th was intended to be a regiment of Massachusetts blacks only, but soon recruiting would have to be done outside as well as inside the state. Many black men hesitated to join the army because of all the good jobs that were popping up and they didn’t want to pass them up. Another was that all the commission officers had to be white. The strongest deterrents of all were the reports that the Confederacy would not treat captured black soldiers the same as ordinary prisoners of war. Andrew had selected Robert Gould Shaw as captain in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry as the 54th colonel and Norwell P.Hallowel, a captain in the 20th Massachusetts as lieutenant colonel. Shaw, the son of Francis George Shaw, was just 24 years old. Only a year earlier, he had left Harvard before graduating to volunteer his service in what he viewed as the war against slavery at age 23. Hallowell was one of two brothers who we part of Wendell Phillip’s army of abolitions in Boston. Andrew had selected all the field officers of the 54th with a lot of care. “I am desirous to have young men of military experience, of firm anti-slavery principles, ambitious, superior to vulgar contempt for color, and having faith in the capacity of colored men for military service,” he wrote. By the beginning of May, the new recruits of the 54th were toting Enfield rifle-muskets and training rigorously at readville, a camp just outside Boston. There, Andrew, on May 18th, 1863, personally presented the unit with its regimental flags.