Biography Of Robert Gould Shaw

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Robert Gould Shaw was born in Boston, Massachusetts 1837 into a family of abolitionists, unlike his mother Sarah Blake, and his father Francis George Robert Gould Shaw did not really have a thing for freeing slaves but his parents had a passion for it. They wanted to end the slave act and have them freed. his dad was called one of the advocates of the abolition of slavery and his mother was a part of it too. The Shaws had a large inheritance left by his paternal grandfather, Robert Gould Shaw, from which he got his name. Shaw had four sisters Anna, Josephine, Susanna, and Ellen. When Robert was five he moved to a large estate in West Roxbury, New York. when he was a teenager he traveled to Europe to study mathematics and foreign languages. While he was in Europe, he learned to play the piano and violin in boarding school in Switzerland. He also went traveled in Europe for social activities, like going to the theater, opera, concerts, and parties. Later on in his life Shaw passed an exam to get into Harvard University back in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was not good with academics and spent most of his time playing sports and music. He was involved in a musical group in which he played the violin. Shaw left Harvard before he actually graduated, disappointed because he was not sure what sort of career he was going to go after. He did not seem like he had any further plans for himself.
With the start of the Civil War, Shaw decided that on April 18th 1861, he would join the Seventh New York National Guard. This regiment marched into battle in Washington, D.C. for 30 days, ordered by the president they fought against the Confederates from Virginia to protect Washington D.C. and won the battle, but that regiment fell apart so Sha...

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...n the chest by one of the Confederates and died almost instantly. As an act of insult, the Confederates buried his body with many of his men. Following the battle, Confederate General Johnson Hagood returned the bodies of the fallen soldiers of the Union who had died in the battle but he left Shaws body where it was. Johnson Hagood informed a captured surgeon of the Union ,“been in command of white troops, I should have given him an honorable burial; as it is, I shall bury him in the common trench with the niggers that fell with him." Even though it was intended to be an insult, Shaw’s friends and family took it as an honorable thing that he was buried with his African-American soldiers. His father Francis George politically proclaimed that he was proud to know that his son was buried with his troops and befitted his role as a soldier and was a crusader of equality.

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