The Best Intentions

The Shaw Memorial commemorates Colonel Shaw and his men for their valor and sacrifices during the Civil War, most notably during the 18 July 1863 assault of Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina, the day on which Shaw died alongside many of his troops. In 1865, a committee of twenty-one was founded to raise funds for the memorial, an equestrian statue, with the stated intent of the memorial being

. . . not only to mark the public gratitude to the fallen hero who at a critical moment assumed a perilous responsibility, but also to commemorate that great event wherein he was a leader by which the title of colored men as citizen soldiers was fixed beyond recall. In such a work all who honor youthful dedication to a noble cause and who rejoice in the triumph of freedom should have an opportunity to contribute.

As treasurer, Atkinson kept track of the funds collected, investing and reinvesting them for more than two decades with respectable return. However, between 1865 and 1884 little else was done. The committee suffered setbacks with the deaths of two significant committee members, former governor John Albion Andrew, who served as chairman, and Senator Charles Sumner. It was not until 1883, when their funds exceeded $16,000, that Atkinson and the others stepped up their efforts to have the memorial actualized. At the recommendation of architect Henry H. Richardson, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens was chosen to create the monument, in part based on his 1880 statue of Civil War hero Admiral David G. Farragut in New York City. Saint-Gaudens spent twelve years on the Shaw memorial, which was completed and unveiled on 31 May 1897.

Placing Memory

The memorial has two main inscriptions on the face of the pedestal, the first of which reads:

ROBERT GOULD SHAW
COLONEL OF THE FIFTY-FOURTH REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS
INFANTRY BORN IN BOSTON OCTOBER X MDCCCXXXVII
KILLED WHILE LEADING THE ASSAULT ON FORT WAGNER
SOUTH CAROLINA JULY XVIII MDCCCLXIII

The draft inscriptions in Atkinson’s letterbooks are probably suggestions from committee members. Stephen T. Riley, the former librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society, wrote that, not too surprisingly, "a wide variance of opinion existed as to what was fitting" for the monument. The drafts of quotes and excerpts are from Anna Waterston's poem "Together," which along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Voluntaries" was favored by John Murray Forbes; Elizabeth B. Sedgwick's poem "Buried with his Niggers"; and an extract from a conversation Shaw had with Lieutenant Colonel Edward Needles Hallowell.

Ultimately, the second inscription chosen for the monument was a stanza of verse from James Russell Lowell's 1863 poem "Memoriæ Positum," championed by committee member Henry Lee. Although inspired by Shaw's death, the poem was not written specifically for the memorial.

Right in the van,
On the red rampart's slippery swell,
With heart that beat a charge, he fell
Foeward, as fits a man,
But the high soul burns on to light men's feet
Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet . . .

The Unveiling

The Shaw Monument was unveiled on 31 May 1897, on what was then called Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day. The ceremony and unveiling--which consisted of a parade, speeches, and music--was considered "particularly sacred" and "a patriotic occasion" by a Boston Globe reporter. In addition to Edward Atkinson and acting chairman of the committee Henry Lee, among those present at the dedication were veterans of the Massachusetts 54th and other regiments who fought in the Civil War, as well as Colonel Norwood Penrose Hallowell, Booker T. Washington, William James, and Governor Roger Wolcott. The MHS holds an albumen print capturing the ceremony that was used in the Boston Journal which shows a bearded man (possibly Edward Atkinson) tipping his hat towards the memorial and lines of participants stretching down Beacon Street. In addition, the Society holds an 1897 photomechanical print signed by Saint-Gaudens. Whether the timing was coincidental or not, the Shaw memorial was publicly unveiled just over thirty-four years after he marched past the State House with his troops on 28 May 1863, on his way to the steamer for South Carolina.

Post Script: Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam

James Russell Lowell's great-great-grandson, poet Robert Lowell, penned the following lines nearly a century after Shaw's brave death in his 1960 poem "For the Union Dead":

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wren like vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

"For the Union Dead" deals with Boston’s changing landscape--the disappearance of landmarks and the excavation of Boston Common for a parking garage. Memory and the Shaw Memorial are "shaking" from the civic activity, “propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.” Lowell contrasts the Shaw memorial to the lack of remembrance in Boston for World War II, marked only by “a commercial photograph / shows Hiroshima boiling / over a Mosler Safe, / the ‘Rock of Ages’ that survived the blast.”

"For the Union Dead" served as title poem to Lowell's 1964 volume of poems For the Union Dead, the cover of which featured a drawing of the Shaw Memorial by Francis Parker. (See the cover here.)