Robert Gould Shaw was born in 1837 to wealthy Boston abolitionists Francis and Sarah Shaw, who lived beside the Brook Farm commune. He was miserable at a Catholic prep school in New York, drifted through schools in Switzerland and Hanover, read Uncle Tom’s Cabin repeatedly, dropped out of Harvard, and hated clerking at his uncle’s firm. The Civil War gave him structure: he fought with the 2nd Massachusetts at Winchester, Cedar Mountain, and Antietam and was wounded twice.

Governor John A. Andrew offered him command of the 54th Massachusetts, a Black regiment, and Shaw at first declined, fearing the men would be used only as laborers. Once in command he drilled them hard, urged them to refuse unequal pay of $10 a month, and protested in writing when Colonel James Montgomery burned Darien, Georgia. On July 18, 1863, he led the assault on Fort Wagner and was killed on the parapet. General Johnson Hagood had his body thrown into a trench with his men, and his father replied that no holier place could be imagined.

• Frederick Douglass sent two of his sons to serve in the 54th Massachusetts.
• Fort Wagner’s sand and palmetto log walls absorbed the naval bombardment that was meant to weaken it.
• Shaw married Annie in May 1863, and she lived as his widow until 1907 without remarrying.
• After the battle, Black enlistment surged, with over 100,000 African Americans eventually joining the Union Army.
• Shaw’s sword, stolen from his body, was found in 2017 in a Massachusetts attic by descendants of his sister.