Excerpt from Four Addresses
by Henry Lee Higginson:
"Robert Gould Shaw"
Delivered in Sanders Theatre, Cambridge
May 30, 1897

Students of Harvard University, and men of the Grand Army of the Republic, to-morrow, the Decoration Day of this year, will be made memorable by the unveiling of Mr. Augustus St. Gaudens' monument to Colonel Robert G. Shaw and to the officers and men of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers; and by an address delivered in the Music Hall of Boston, by Professor William James, one of whose brothers was adjutant of the Fifty-Fourth and another an officer of the Fifty-Fifth Regiment-both regiments colored troops; and still further by an address from Booker T. Washington, Principal of the Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama.

To us it is a joyful day, for each year it marks the memories of comrade whose intelligence showed to them the right course, whose hearts approved it, and whose characters enabled them to take and keep it unflinchingly.

Decoration Day is their day, and all the rest of the year belongs to you.

To-day I wish to talk to you if the Fifty-Fourth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, colored, commanded by Colonel Robert Shaw, and of slavery, which, as a deadly poison to our nation, they strove to remove.

Any word of mine which may seem harsh to our brothers of the South has no such meaning or feeling. The sin of slavery was national, and caused the sin of disunion. Together we wiped out with our blood these two great wrongs long ago, and we also wiped out all unkind feeling.

I for one feel sure of this last fact, and think that it has been helped by the conviction that our blows were aimed at the sins of slavery and of disunion, and not at our opponents....

My reason for speaking of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment is to set forth the devotion and great courage of its officers and men, for they knew full well that they should suffer the dislike of many Northerners and the extreme ire of Southerners; and yet they dared all-and by their high bearing and conduct made an epoch in a very troubled time.

My reason for asking leave to say a few words about Robert Shaw is that we, his comrade, respected and admired him more and more as time went on. Won at first by his great personal charm, we were held hast by his high, simple, and loyal character. No doubt our country had many such, and indeed both armies were filled with men who, seeking nothing for themselves, did their duty well and then went quietly back to their homes. But Robert Shaw, while happy and content in his own regiment, nevertheless chose the nobler part of serving at the post of greatest danger and of obloquy, and thus helped the negroes to a standing unknown and indeed denied to them heretofore.

Therefore, we held Robert Shaw dear, and so I would speak to you of him. If you think my words those of a friend and a lover, I can only answer that if you had known him, you would also have loved him as we did....

Only those living in the early days of '61 can guess at the fever-heat, the enthusiasm and loyalty glowing in our people at that time and which burst forth at the President's first call for troops. The first regiments to march felt the full force of this tide, and among them was the splendid Seventh Regiment, New York National Guard, the pride of that city. In this regiment Robert Shaw served as a private soldier. As it swung out from Union Square into Broadway, it was greeted with a roar which lasted all the way to the Battery, where it embarked, and Robert Shaw, the flank man of his platoon, was seized and kissed by man after man, as they marched down Broadway.

He served his thirty days in Maryland and Washington, and then was commissioned in the Second Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

It was the first regiment enlisted for three years of the war and accepted by the United States, and in it I had the honor to serve. During the early days of camp life, May '61, at Brook Farm in West Roxbury, I first saw Robert Shaw, and was captivated by him, as most people were.

Let me tell you how he looked: his figure was firmly and closely knit, rather short and erect, and his gait and movements alert. His features were delicate and well-cut, and set off by a fine complexion and winning merry blue eyes and golden hair,-a very handsome man. He had charming, easy, frank manners and gay, yet thoughtful ways. Everyone liked him, and all trusted him implicitly. He did his full share of the new and severe work, and brightened life by his droll words and cheerful smiles.

We young fellows, full of enthusiasm and bent only on defending our country had been drawn by an irresistible impulse into the service. We could not stay at home, and were very eager to make ourselves soldiers.

We were fortunate in learning our first lessons from two well-trained and able West Point officers,-Colonel George H. Gordon and Lieutenant-Colonel George L. Andrews, who spared neither themselves nor us in every detail of duty.

And so we worked away in camp, and marched on July 8, 1861, through Boston; were taken to New York, Philadelphia, and Hagerstown, and thence marched to Virginia and Harper's Ferry. There the engine-house of the U.S. Armory, within whose walls John Brown had been captured, was out guard-house; and among other daily duties our regiment was ordered to stop runaway slaves and give them up to their owners who might claim them. It was a great trial to Robert Shaw as to many of us, but we had just sworn obedience to the United States, and had no recourse from this duty.

The summer and early fall were spent in the usual duties of soldiers,-except that of fighting,-but we got the needed training, the habits which insure involuntary obedience and efficiency; and we learned the proper care of our own health and that of our men. Each officer vied with the others in raising the standard of work, and Robert Shaw did his full share, enlivening it with his gayety and his very presence. Now and again came an alarm or a little picket-firing, and late in October we had a sharp night march to Ball's Bluff, with high hopes of a good fight, but we arrived only in time to see the wounded men who had been rescued from death or capture.

After some months of service, Major Greely Curtis, Captain Motley, and I were commissioned in the First Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry, and thus were parted from our old friends. We rarely met Robert Shaw after that, but we watched the course of the Second Massachusetts Regiment, gloried in its splendid service, and mourned for its great loses at the battle of Winchester, Cedar Mountain, Antietam, and Gettysburg.

Except during a few months on the staff of General Gordon, our first colonel, Robert Shaw served continuously with the Second Massachusetts. It was his school and home for nearly two years, and its honor is his honor. It served in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania and had a foremost part in many of our great battles there until the fall of '63, when it was sent West to served under General Grant in the Chattanooga campaign, and finally marched with Sherman to the sea and to North Carolina, where Johnston's army surrendered to the Federal army under Sherman.

Four years to a day after this regiment went into camp at Brook Farm, it entered Richmond, May 11, 1865. The war had been fought out, President Lincoln had been killed, and peace ruled once more throughout our land. It had marched from Boston with 38 commissioned officers and 1040 enlisted men, whose numbers were increased several times by recruits. It took into Richmond four of the original officers and less than 100 enlisted men. Its record is that it never left a position in battle until ordered to do so by its brigade commander. More cannot be said for soldiers.

One morning in February, '63, as our regiment, the First Mass. Cavalry, lay in camp before Fredericksburg, Robert Shaw and Charles Morse, who also was a fine officer of the Second Massachusetts, rode up to the little log-house in which Greely Curtis and I lived. We four had marched from Boston together, had lived and worked together, and were held together by strong bonds. Robert Shaw, who was very fond of Greely Curtis, came to tell us that he was going home to be colonel of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, colored. This was great news, indeed a real event in our lives; for we all knew how much Robert cared for his own regiment, the 2nd Massachusetts, how fond he was of his old comrades, and how contrary to his wishes this move was.

Sure of all this, and knowing well the full significance and nobility of the step, we two troopers expressed our strong approval and sympathy with his action, which greatly pleased him, for at that date plenty of good people frowned on the use of colored troops. Bob said, "Governor Andrew has asked me, and I am going; but if either of you fellows will go, I'll gladly serve under you. I don't want the higher rank." We should have been glad to serve under him, but had out duty to perform in our own regiment; and so we could only bid him good-by.

From the beginning of the war, our great Governor Andrew had thought that colored men should be enlisted as soldiers, and at last, after many urgent pleas from his eloquent lips, had got leave from the War Department to raise such a regiment in Massachusetts. Looking around for a commander, he had lighted on Robert Shaw, and asked his father, Mr. Francis G. Shaw, to take the offer to his son. Robert refused, doubting his own capacity, and his father went home. Next day Robert talked the matter over with his commanding officer, who assured him of his entire fitness for the task, and therefore he telegraphed Governor Andrew his acceptance of the offer.

He writes at this time to his mother: "I feel convinced I shall never regret having taken this step, as far as I myself am concerned; for while I was undecided I felt ashamed of myself, as if I were cowardly." It was a singularly simple, direct, earnest, true mind and character. He held strong opinions and beliefs which governed him, and was not tortured with doubts as so many people are. He took things as they came, and did the plain duty ready to his hand. He thought for himself; revolted at the sight of injustice or cruelty; was full of courage and manliness, and enriched and warmed his own life and that of others by his sympathy and affection. Not a sign of fanaticism or sentimentality, but a deep, true, and warm reverence for goodness and nobility in men and women, was always present and expressed. He had been fortunate in parents who held high and generous views of life, and who brought up their large family in the same spirit. Our land is to-day the richer for the work and the lives of this family circle,-of brilliant soldiers, scholars, public citizens,-Mr. Francis G. Shaw, General Francis C. Barlow, Colonel Charles R. Lowell, George William Curtis, and Robert B. Minturn,-and the name of one woman now living is always heard throughout our land when good deeds are done.*

[*Barlow, Lowell, Curtis and Minturn had all married sisters of Robert Gould Shaw; the woman Higginson is referring to is probably Shaw's sister, Josephine Shaw Lowell.]

During his camp life with the 2nd Massachusetts, Robert Shaw, following his natural bent, had turned to the men of the highest character and ideas, and he gave them his confidence and affection. They in their turn loved him for his charms and his great virtues. In those days he never seemed to be a distinguished man, and yet even then a rare man. He was like a day in June, sweet, wholesome, vigorous, breezy.

But his qualities of which I speak blended so well that they carried him straight forward to a great work, and thus to high honor. With plenty of brains, he nevertheless was chiefly distinguished through his character, which is by far the finer and rarer gift.

My words fail to give a full picture of the man. Listen to a letter written just after Robert Shaw's death by one fellow-officer of the 2nd Mass. to another. The writer had met Robert Shaw first in camp at Brook Farm, had served by his side for two years, and was himself a high-minded, simple-hearted, loyal soldier and gentleman, who had just distinguished himself highly at Gettysburg. He writes:

"I suppose it was as great a shock to you as it was to me, Bob Shaw's death; it seemed almost impossible to realize it.

I never had anyone's death come home to me so, as his did. I never knew a fellow I liked so much nor could sympathize with so fully. He had such a happy disposition that it was always pleasant to be near him. I've often in camp gone into his tent to sit and read, when neither or us would say a word for an hour, merely for this reason.

I have accepted it as a natural consequence when other good fellows have been killed, but Bob's death I can't get over. I don't think I ever knew any one who had everything so in his favor for a happy life.

Not looking at it selfishly, his death was certainly a glorious one. Very few fellows have had such a chance to distinguish themselves, nor will be so well remembered. His regiment must have done nobly." [letter of Charles Morse to Greely Curtis]

Harvard students! Whenever you hear of Colonel Shaw, or of any officer or of any man of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, salute him in the name of Harvard University and Harvard men.

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