The Monument to Robert Gould Shaw. Its Inception, Completion and Unveiling 1865–1897.

Sumptious tribute to Shaw and the 54th, with speeches by Booker T. Washington and William James

---

Scarce and substantial tribute to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first African American regiment to be mustered in the North to fight for the Union cause. Published here are the full proceedings of the 1897 dedication ceremony in Boston, including Booker T. Washington’s keynote address, an address on Shaw by Washington, D.C. minister and outspoken Black nationalist William Bishop Johnson, William James’s “Oration,” and Emerson’s poem “Voluntaries” (BAL 5240).

The book was designed by Bruce Rogers and includes a photogravure frontispiece of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s colossal Shaw Memorial. The artist labored for 14 years on the bronze relief, one of the most emotionally resonant monuments of the Civil War. Installed on Boston Common, it depicts Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the Boston Brahmin commander, leading his all-Black 54th Massachusetts Regiment into battle. Shaw and many of his men were killed during the regiment’s heroic assault on Fort Wagner in 1863.

Washington’s address, delivered at the close of the ceremony (pp. 91–95), ends with a quotation from John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Howard at Atlanta”: “The slave’s chain and the master’s / Alike are broken. / The one curse of the races / Held both in tether: / They are rising, — all are rising, / The black and white together!” Washington’s astute decision to quote a Massachusetts-born poet for a Boston audience provided a poignant touch to his speech.

Price: $2,000.00