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"Robert Gould Shaw, soldier, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, October 10,
1837, son of Francis George and Sarah Blake (Sturgis) Shaw, and grandson of
Robert Gould Shaw of Gouldsborough, Maine., and of Boston, where he founded
an asylum for mariner children. His father, whose home was
at New Brighton, Staten Island, after 1847, was a prominent philanthropist
and promoter of reforms. George William Curtis, Francis C. Barlow, Charles
Russell Lowell and Robert B. Minturn were his brothers-in- law; and young
Shaw grew up in an atmosphere that was not only conducive to culture and the
highest refinement, but to intense patriotism, also, and the attainment of
that spirit of consecration to principles that leads to the giving up of
life.
Manly, healthy, high-spirited, simple-hearted as a boy,
he increased in worth as he advanced in years; his exceptionally winning
manner, his faculty of entering with true sympathy into the feelings of
others, his influence quietly exerted along the noblest lines of action,
giving him more and more prominence among his fellows. He had a marked love
for music and for literature, and in the gratification of these and like
tastes had all the encouragement that devoted parents could give.
He entered Harvard College in 1856, but left in 1859 and
entered a counting-room in New York city, preparatory to becoming a
merchant. Foreseeing troublous times and peril to his country, he enlisted
in the 7th regiment and departed with it for Washington on April 19, 1861.
Before his term of service expired, he took a commission (May 28th) as
second lieutenant in the 2nd Massachusetts regiment; was promoted to first
lieutenant Massachusetts regiment; was promoted to first lieutenant July
8th, and rose to the rank of captain, Aug. 10, 1862. He passed unscathed
through engagement after engagement, though barely escaping death at the
Battle of Winchester, and was still in active service in the spring of 1863,
when he received the appointment of colonel of the 54th Massachusetts, the
first [African American] regiment sent into the field from the free states.
Having decided to employ blacks as soldiers,
Governor
Andrew determined to place at their head "only gentlemen of the highest tone
and honor," and Captain Shaw was the first selected. The appointment was
made on February 3rd, and was declined; but three days later, the young
captain accepted, prompted by a sense of duty, and returning to
Massachusetts, he began the work of filling the ranks of the regiment and
then of drilling and disciplining them in their camp at Readville. On May
28th he marched through Boston at the head of his soldiers, and the scene
presented is said to have been one of the most thrilling of the war.
The 54th acquitted itself well in a skirmish on James
island, S. C., on July 16th, and Col. Shaw requested to have it brigaded
with the white troops under Gen. George C. Strong. The request being
granted, he set out to join the main force at Folly and Morris islands; a
new attack on Fort Wagner having been planned. The assault was made about
eight o'clock on the 18th, and was participated in by six-regiments, the
54th being formed into two lines, Co!. Shaw leading the right wing in front.
"We shall take the fort or die there!" he exclaimed, and in the same spirit
his men followed him up the rampart, breaking and reforming under the
terrible fire that met them, until the summit was reached and there, waving
his sword, the young hero fell. The regiment, with more than half its
officers killed or wounded and with its ranks reduced nearly one half, was
then withdrawn, and the brave colonel's body was left to be "buried with his
n- [racial slur], "as the commanding officer of the fort expressed it. Gen. Gillmore offered to have it recovered; but Col. Shaw's father requested that
it be left in its honorable grave, and not many years later, the sea, by its
encroachments, washed away the trench that was the tomb of officers and men.
In 1865 a committee of the citizens of Boston, headed by
Gov. Andrew, took steps to erect a monument that should typify patriotic
devotion, and it was decided that the figure of Col. Shaw, as best embodying
that idea, should be made the central one of the sculpture. By 1884 the fund
had become sufficient to procure a memorial of the highest artistic merit,
and Augustus St. Gaudens was given the commission* The monument, unveiled in
1897, stands on Boston Common, opposite the State House, and among its
inscriptions is "Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam" [He
relinquished everything to serve the Republic,] the motto of the Society of the
Cincinnati, of which Col. Shaw's father was a member. Also, a bust by
Edmonia Lewis, the African American sculptor, was placed in Memorial Hall,
at Cambridge, and a tablet in the same building, also perpetuates his
memory.
Col. Shaw was married May 2, 1863, to Anna Kneeland
Haggerty, who never remarried after the death of her husband."
-- 1900 Biography, Edited
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