Booknotes: A Glorious Fate

New Arrival:

• A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw by Kevin M. Levin (UNC Press, 2026).

From the description: "Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863) is best known as the heroic colonel who led the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment—one of the first regiments of Black soldiers in the Civil War—in its famous ill-fated charge against Confederate Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. Shaw’s sacrifice has been commemorated in monuments, books, and the award-winning film Glory."

In retrospect, Matthew Broderick's casting as Shaw in Glory seems almost perfect, but I distinctly remember leaving the theater in 1989 with the impression (mistaken as that proved to be) that he was horribly miscast as a far too youthful colonel. Little did I know at the time that Broderick was actually several years older than the character he portrayed. When it comes to its on-screen exploration of Shaw's relationship to the abolitionist movement of his parents' social circle, the movie also deserves credit for giving Shaw a character arc that seems to roughly correspond to history. Christ-like self-sacrifice only comes at the very end of the film.

Kevin Levin's A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw is the first major Shaw biography to appear this century. In terms of comparable works, it is preceded most recently by Shaw correspondence editor Russell Duncan's 1999 combined biography and unit study Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.

When it comes to describing and assessing young Shaw's personal and ideological growth and progression, common themes emerge from both authors. Duncan's Shaw is "just past the cusp of manhood and still struggling against his mother's indomitable will, thrust unexpectedly into the national limelight." Shaw was the "rebellious son of wealthy Boston abolitionists who never fully reconciled his own racial prejudices yet went on to head the North's vanguard black regiment and give his life to the cause of freedom." This is not a review, so I don't know if Levin entirely agrees with Duncan's views on the mother-son relationship, but, similar to Duncan's overall assessment, Levin's Shaw "was a privileged young man who showed little interest in the reform movements that defined his parents' lives or in the moral crisis over slavery that was tearing the nation apart. Volunteering to serve as a duty, he awakened gradually and fitfully to the demands of conscience and command. Only in death was Shaw transformed into the champion for freedom his abolitionist parents hoped he would be."

More from the description: A Glorious Fate "traces (Shaw's) transformation from a rebellious son into one of the Civil War’s most celebrated heroes." Levin's biography "also reveals the sacrifice and service of the African American men who fought and died for their freedom afresh through Shaw’s eyes." In the end, "(t)hough Shaw never fully reconciled his own racial prejudices, Levin shows how the Civil War changed the young colonel as it did the nation."