page_title: Robert Gould Shaw
section_title: Memorials
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Gould Shaw / Memorials
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial plaque to en:Robert Gould Shaw in Harvard University's Memorial Hall.
context_page_description: Robert Gould Shaw was an American officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Born into a prominent Boston abolitionist family, he accepted command of the first all-black regiment in the Northeast. Supporting the promised equal treatment for his troops, he encouraged the men to refuse their pay until it was equal to that of white troops' wage.
  He led his regiment at the Second Battle of Fort Wagner in July 1863. They attacked a beachhead near Charleston, South Carolina, and Shaw was killed while leading his men to the parapet of the Confederate-held fort. Although the regiment was overwhelmed by firing from the defenses and driven back, suffering many casualties, Shaw's leadership and the regiment became legendary. They inspired hundreds of thousands more African Americans to enlist for the Union helping to turn the tide of the war to its ultimate victory.
context_section_description: A cenotaph at the Mount Auburn Cemetery
  In 1864, American sculptor Edmonia Lewis created a bust of Shaw.
  The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial was unveiled on May 31, 1897, at its site on the Boston Common. The large sculptural monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens has a frieze of Shaw on horseback, accompanied by members of the 54th Regiment, as they marched through Boston to depart for the war. It was featured in the ending credits of the film Glory (1989).
  There they march, warm-blooded champions of a better day for man. There on horseback among them, in his very habit as he lived, sits the blue-eyed child of fortune, upon whose happy youth every divinity had smiled.
  — Oration by William James at the exercises in the Boston Music Hall, May 31, 1897, upon the unveiling of the Shaw Monument.
  A patinated plaster cast of a slightly different design for the Shaw Memorial is now on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which also holds some drawings and plaster mock-ups of the sculpture.
  A monument to Shaw's memory was erected by his family in the plot at Moravian Cemetery in Staten Island, New York. An annual commemoration is held there on his birthday.
  Although Shaw did not graduate from Harvard College, his name is listed on the tablets of honor in the university's Memorial Transept.
  Fordham University likewise celebrates Shaw as an alumnus by honoring him in the University Hall of Honor, and separately in the Fordham University Military Hall of Fame.
caption: Entry for Shaw in Harvard University's Memorial Hall
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