7. Robert Gould Shaw was an American officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
8. The Confederate Congress passed its own law in March 1863. Routine impressment calls throughout the rest of the war forced thousands of free and enslaved black men at a time into service. These men typically served terms of two to three months digging trenches or building fortifications for the Engineer Department.
9. Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and 272 of his troops are killed in an assault on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. Shaw was commander of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, perhaps the most famous regiment of African American troops during the war.
10. Shaw's parents, however, prominent in Boston as strong abolitionists, resisted this sentiment. His father sent instructions to the officers of his son's regiment, writing, “We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave & devoted soldiers, if we could accomplish it by a word.
