Shaw, Robert Gould

Shaw, Robert Gould

(1837–63) soldier; born in Boston, Mass. The son of abolitionists, he enlisted in the Union army early in the Civil War. In April 1863 he assumed command—initially with some reluctance—of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, the first northern black regiment to see combat. He was killed in July leading a charge on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. He and the events leading to this fateful charge were portrayed in the film Glory (1990). Shaw and his regiment are memorialized in a low-relief sculpture by Saint-Gaudens (1884–97) in the Boston Common.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.