The youth and class of Colonel Shaw

Rating: 10/10 (28 January 2011)

I did research on Robert Gould Shaw. His greatgrandfather formed Gouldsboro, Maine, with Robert Gould and one other. Mr. Shaw was a merchant in Boston. Two of his sons settled in Maine, dying in their forties. One was the grandfather of Robert Gould Shaw. His family moved to Staten Island and Robert at age 12 did a miserable stint at St. John's College, West Hills Farms, Westchester, the future Fordham University, The Bronx, New York. After one year there, he travelled with his family through Europe, being taught by tutors. In 1856, he entered Harvard University, graduating in 1860. The family still lived on Staten Island, NY, and the censuses for 1840, 1850 and 1860, show several servants.
The South saw hypocrisy in the North. Immigrant labor was exploited for cheap labor and unions were suppressed. The term "wage slavery" was applied by slave owners to this Northern aberration. The household servants were certainly well-treated and cherished. But their Irish, German and Polish relatives lived in slums and exploded in 1863 in the Draft Riots. Their people were fighting for the black man whom they saw as competitors for their jobs. This competition was used by the upper classes to maintain their profits. It was their homes that were ransacked during the Riots. It was New York militia men who put down the rioters after returning from Gettysburg. Irish killing Irish.
The war was a fight for freedom. The fight continued after for everybody.Blacks and poor whites were held back in the South, and Labor in the North was seen as a threat. The fight goes on even today with different immigrants. But instead of cheap labor coming here, companies find it in the Third World.
Unmentioned is Andre Braugher who played the bookish intellectual soldier whom Denzel Washington picked on. The moderate, thinking brains of the future offset by the impulsive, reactive orator goading people to action. Two sides of a movement. John Finn was the Irish drill sergeant who called the troops "ye bloody Hindoos". Shaw wanted discipline and pride in the ranks, and his sergeants hammered it into them.