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Robert Gould Shaw (October 10, 1837 – July 18, 1863) was an American officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Born into a abolitionist family from the Boston upper class, he accepted command of the first all-black regiment (the 54th Massachusetts) in the Northeast.
Oct 6, 2024 · Robert Gould Shaw, Union army officer who commanded a prominent regiment of African American troops during the American Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts. He died fighting alongside the regiment while assaulting Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863.
- Construction
- Battle
- Significance
Fort Wagner stood on Morris Island, guarding the approach to Charleston harbor. It was a massive earthwork, 600 feet wide and made from sand piled 30 feet high. The only approach to the fort was across a narrow stretch of beach bounded by the Atlantic on one side and a swampy marshland on the other. Union General Quincy Gillmore headed an operation...
Union artillery battered Fort Wagner all day on July 18, but the barrage did little damage to the fort and its garrison. At 7:45 p.m., the attack commenced. Yankee troops had to march 1,200 yards down the beach to the stronghold, facing a hail of bullets from the Confederates. Shaws troops and other Union regiments penetrated the walls at two point...
Despite the failure, the battle proved that African-American forces could not only hold their own but also excel in battle. The experience of Shaw and his regiment was memorialized in the critically acclaimed 1990 movie Glory, starring Mathew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman. Washington won an Academy Award for his role in the film.
Despite his image in the 1989 film Glory, Robert Gould Shaw was a reluctant leader of the famous 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first African American regiments in the Civil War.
biographies. Robert Gould Shaw. Colonel. 54th Massachusetts Regiment. October 10, 1837 – July 18, 1863. Robert Gould Shaw, circa 1861-1863. Library of Congress. During the Civil War, many abolitionists in the North advocated for the immediate freedom of all enslaved persons.
R obert Gould Shaw became a hero as commanding officer of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment—the first all-black regiment to be organized in the North. Black men were not allowed to join the Union Army in the early days of the Civil War.
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When Col. Robert Gould Shaw led his newly formed 54th Massachusetts Regiment down Boston's Beacon Street and off to war, American poet John Greenleaf Whittier described Shaw as "the very...
