Originally published on September 16, 2026 (Episode 476).
Introduction
On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts—one of the first Black regiments in the Union Army, and the first raised in the North—led an assault on Fort Wagner, one of the fortifications defending Charleston, South Carolina.
Their attack was preceded by an eight-hour bombardment that did little damage to the fort’s walls or defenders. Moving through heavy Confederate small-arms fire, with their commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, at their head, the 54th made their way up the walls and into hand-to-hand combat, but were bloodily repulsed. By the end of the action, Shaw and some 250 men had been killed, wounded, or captured.
With his death, Robert Gould Shaw became a hero of the abolitionist movement, eventually memorialized in bronze at the head of his regiment on Boston Common. But as my guest Kevin Levin argues in his new book, A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, he was a much more complicated and ambiguous person than even his contemporaries claimed him to be.
About the Guest
Kevin M. Levin is an award-winning historian and educator based in Boston. His work explores the history and memory of the Civil War, particularly the ways Americans have remembered slavery, emancipation, Black military service, and the Confederacy. His books include Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder, and now A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. He has written about Civil War history and memory online since founding Civil War Memory in 2005 and is an honorary fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
For Further Investigation
Kevin M. Levin, A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (University of North Carolina Press, 2026).
—, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
—, Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder (University Press of Kentucky, 2017)
Robert Gould Shaw, Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, edited by Russell Duncan (University of Georgia Press, 1992).
Ray Anthony Shepard, Now or Never!: 54th Massachusetts Infantry’s War to End Slavery (Calkins Creek, 2017).
The National Park Service, “The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial.”
The National Park Service, “Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment.”
The National Park Service, “Faces of the 54th.”
Related Episodes
Now or Never!: Ray Anthony Shepard on the battles, sacrifices, and legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment in its fight for freedom
Worse Than Hell: W. Fitzhugh Brundage on Civil War prisoners and prison camps
Terrible Intimacy: Melvin Patrick Ely on interracial life in the slaveholding South.
Armies of Deliverance—Elizabeth Varon’s interpretation of the Civil War
Black Suffrage: Paul D. Escott on Lincoln’s last goal and the politics of Reconstruction
Tags: Kevin M. Levin, Robert Gould Shaw, 54th Massachusetts, Fort Wagner, Civil War, Emancipation, Black Soldiers, Abolitionism, Civil War Memory, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Glory, Historical Memory
