Shaw, Robert Gould

Life Span
to
Full name
Robert Gould Shaw
Place of Birth
Burial Place
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Sectional choice
North
Origins
Free State
No. of Spouses
1
No. of Children
0
Family
Francis George Shaw (father), Sarah Blake Sturgis (mother), Annie Kneeland Haggerty (wife, 1863)
Education
Harvard
Occupation
Military
Relation to Slavery
White non-slaveholder
Military
Union Army

Robert Gould Shaw (American National Biography)

Scholarship
On 16 July [1863] the Fifty-fourth had the opportunity to recoup its self-esteem when Confederate forces waged a surprise attack on James Island, South Carolina. A group of 250 members of the Fifty-fourth held off repeated assaults, giving the Federal troops time to organize a defensive retreat. Two days later, on Morris Island, Shaw proudly volunteered his regiment to lead the assault on the impregnable Fort Wagner, the first step in an offensive on the Confederate stronghold of Charleston, South Carolina. When the Fifty-fourth charged the fort, 272 were killed, wounded, or captured. One of those who fell was Shaw. Although the assault failed, the bravery of the Fifty-fourth proved the ability of African-American troops in battle. In death, the young Shaw was ennobled as a martyr to freedom and as a symbol of enlightened sacrifice. He and the Fifty-fourth were later memorialized by Augustus Saint-Gaudens's mythic monument placed on the Boston Common.
Matthew H. Crocker, "Shaw, Robert Gould," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-01086.html.
How to Cite This Page: "Shaw, Robert Gould," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/32657.