Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw

Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw | Robert Gould Shaw | Bringing War to Life

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Blue-Eyed Child of...

	Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw Robert Gould Shaw University of Georgia Press, 1999 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The "real" Robert Gould Shaw is in these pages

If, like me, you have seen the film "Glory", where Matthew Broderick plays Col. Robert Gould Shaw, white commander of the black 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War, you will see only a brief a glimpse of who Shaw was in his short life. Broderick does a masterful job of capturing some of Shaw's personality, but if you want to get inside this young man's head and find out who he really was, I highly recommend reading the book, "Blue Eyed Child of Fortune", ed. by Russell Duncan.

This collection of Shaw's letters shows a far more complex and conflicted young man than Broderick was given a chance to play. While his parents burned with the abolitionist spirit of Boston's intellectual elite, Shaw struggled with his own prejudices and his own self doubts throughout his short life. Never an exemplary student, he dropped out of Harvard to work in his uncle's New York firm, but rapidly found the work boring and unsuited to him. Struggling to find his place in the world, the Civil War came along and gave him a sense of purpose and direction.

Enlisting first in the 7th New York Guards, he served until his enlistment was up, and then joined the 2nd Massachusetts, gaining position as an officer. He "saw the elephant" at Winchester, Antietam and Cedar Mountain, was slightly wounded in two of those engagements, and found out first hand about the horrors of war. During winter camp in 1862-63, his father visited with word that Shaw had been tapped by Massachusetts Governor John Albion Andrew to command a new black regiment. At first, Shaw refused this offer on the basis that he felt a strong bond with the men he had fought and bled with, but then changed his mind and accepted the position of Colonel of the 54th Massachusetts.

Returning home to Boston to take command of his new regiment, he was deeply conflicted over whether these men would pan out to be good soldiers, but as time wore on and they proved their worth, Shaw's respect for his men grew, as did their respect for their commanding officer. After three months training, they left for duty in South Carolina after a grand parade down Boston streets. Shaw chafed for some action for his men, and the first that they saw was the tragic raid and burning of Darien, Georgia under the command of Kansas jayhawker Col. James Montgomery. Shaw was outraged at this action and very nearly refused his orders from his commanding officer, but reluctantly had to obey and ask his men to do what he felt was utterly immoral and against the codes of war. He would write letters of protest to his father and to others.

Eventually, in his quest for real action for his men, they were assigned a diversionary action on James Island to allow Union troops to land on nearby Morris Island for a planned assault on Fort Wagner a few days later. Sustaining light casualties in a skirmish, Shaw was impressed that his men were indeed up to snuff as soldiers, and so, a few days later, after a long exhausting march in a storm to Morris Island during which they got no rest, they were assigned to the lead attack column on Fort Wagner on the evening of July 18, 1863.

Sadly, Union intelligence on Ft. Wagner was badly flawed. It was originally thought that the fort held a complement of only 300 men and that after days of relentless shelling by the Union navies, that the fort would be softened up enough to withstand a frontal Union assault. However, most of Wagner's nearly 1500 men were in a massive bombproof riding out the shelling, and so, when the Union assault began with the 54th leading the attack column, they took the heaviest casualties, including the young Col. Shaw, who foresaw his own demise while speaking to Lt. Col. Edward "Ned" Hallowell, his second-in-command, while on a steamer on the way to their assignment: "If I could only live a few weeks longer with my wife, and be at home a little while, I might die happy, but it cannot be. I do not believe I will live through our next fight."

Rather unfortunately, Shaw was right. He was killed upon reaching the parapets of Wagner, a bullet through his heart killing him instantly. His body was stripped and thrown into a common grave with his men, and his father asked, when the Union finally took the fort a few months later when it was abandoned by the Confederates, that his body be left there with his men. Shaw's burial spot now lies somewhere under the Atlantic Ocean, the island having eroded significantly in the past 140 years since Shaw's demise and burial there.

This book will give you a great insight into a very conflicted, complicated and yet reluctantly heroic young man who was just coming into his own at the time of his tragic death. I am sure that he would have shunned the limelight had he survived the war to live to old age and would have been content to live life with his beloved Annie, to whom he was married a mere two months before his death. Annie would never remarry and lived the rest of her life as his widow, dying in 1907. The war would doubtless have made Shaw and given him the potential to focus his life and go on to great things had he lived to do so. Having lived so much of his young life with such rebellion against his mother's domineering apron strings and not quite sure what he wanted out of life, the war gave Shaw a brief opportunity to find out what it was he was made of. In so doing, he achieved the one thing he never dreamed of, immortality.

Read this book if you are eager to know the "real" Shaw. Letting him speak for himself is the best way to know this fascinating man who died so tragically young at the peak of his life. Follow it up with "Where Death and Glory Meet", Russell Duncan's excellent biography of Shaw. By the time you finish these two books, you will feel as if you know Shaw quite well. If you want to know a few of his men, read "A Brave Black Regiment" by Capt. Luis Emilio, a regimental history of the 54th, "On the Altar of Freedom" by Cpl. James Henry Gooding, a black soldier in the 54th, and "A Voice of Thunder", the letters of Sgt. George E. Stephens, another black soldier in the 54th. I just hope that more letters and diaries from this regiment surface and are published someday. Doubtless there are more hiding in attics and other unknown places.

This book comes highly recommended for good Civil War reading of a primary source, along with the other books mentioned that are by Shaw's soldiers. Together, they beat any historian's account of this historic regiment. Read them all if you are interested in Civil War or black history.

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Bringing War to Life

Robert Gould Shaw's letters home are a very realistic look of the Civil War battles by a unique individual with many perspectives. The brutality of battle along with the emotional turmoil from such a young officer bring the war to life. The authors have given us a true picture of a brave officer and the war. As you read the letters of Shaw you want to pull the blankets closer on the cold winter nights he spent in the field. You can share the suffering along with Shaw at the loss of friends. The courage and love of family and devotion of country are evident throughout his premature adult life. God bless the 54th and may Robert Gould Shaw and all that served with him and under him never be forgotten.

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it's must have book I love this book

A hero by default

Russell Duncan's compendium of letters both exalts and puzzles.The job of editing the letters and setting them in the context of war, family ties, friendships, etc. is thorough and, for the most part, makes them accessible. Let's not forget, though, that the editor omitted some letters that don't support his main thesis: that Col. Shaw was a rich young pleasure-lover who fought to get back to his privileged existence, never changing this outlook throughout the war; he "never fully understood nor dedicated himself" to the cause of Black freedom (pp.1-2). So here we are presented with a young man raised by abolitionists who went to all the hazards of preparing and leading something new, a black regiment, before dying in the middle of it, without understanding what he was about, or dedicating himself to it. It's fashionable to "debunk" the heros of yore, but even those letters we have tell us otherwise, and Duncan reverses his appraisal, back and forth, several times. We should also beware of measuring citizens of other times against a modern baseline on classism, racism, etc. Apart from these problems, found in the introduction and some footnotes, the book lets Shaw speak for himself (he does it eloquently and enjoyably) and the reader can draw his/her own conclusion on ideas, events, and character development.

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Blued-Eyed Treasure

After viewing the movie Glory for many years I came across this book and purchased it immediately. Robert Gould Shaw grew up in an influencial home which had amazing political and social connections with the abolitionist movement. His words preserved from the past through today and gives us insight on what he was thinking about after fighting at Antietam as well as his feelings about his role and service for this nation.

A must for any civil war reenactor or student of the American Civil War.

reviews: page 1, 2

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