Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (review)

200CIVIL WAR HISTORY Johnston: A Civil War Biography and John F. Marszalek's Sherman: A Soldier 's Passion for Order.) The only major weakness of Decision in the West is the author's audacious —here Lee would have been proud—composition of the entire narrative in the present tense, a method designed to produce a sense of immediacy to the events described. This immensely perilous feature will alienate many, but the book's splendid substance will probably overcome all criticism. Likewise , the numerous illustrations (fifty-five total) could have received much sharper production treatment, and the maps (eighteen total) are only adequate . (For extreme detail and accuracy, the reader can consult William R. Scaife's The Campaign for Atlanta, which includes some of the best Civil War maps [twenty-six total] available.) Yet Castel's superb descriptions of massive armies on the move as well as the stunning viciousness of combat, his deft weavings of biographical sketches and simple stories ofbravery, cowardice , and doggedness together with scores of homespun comments provided by lowly foot soldiers as well as enlightening, often irrefutable statements by field officers on both sides, combine to form a work that is consistently compelling and ultimately convincing. The fruit of almost twenty years of scholarly spadework, complex reflection , and difficult writing, Decision in the West has justly won the coveted and lucrative Lincoln Prize for Excellence in Civil War Studies, doubtless the first of several awards to come. This kind of lifetime project must have seemed such a burden to the author that doubts about its completion often surfaced along the way. But his timing was absolutely perfect. During the past few years some of the most thickly researched and painfully detailed battle narratives and biographies ever produced on the Civil War have been published by university presses, commercial presses, and private presses alike, often in heavy volumes with lofty prices. Clearly this is what the public craves, and Castel has delivered his readers a banquet to devour and relish. For more serious students of the war, the act of absorbing and digesting this feast and then placing it high in the historiographical canon will take only slightly longer. T. Michael Parrish Austin, Texas Blue-Eyed Child ofFortune: The Civil War Letters ofColonel Robert Gould Shaw. Edited by Russell Duncan. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Pp. 421. $29.95.) This is probably a superfluous review. It is hard to imagine a serious student of the Civil War who will not read the first scholarly edition of Robert Gould Shaw's letters. That Russell Duncan has done a superlative job ofediting and introducing these letters makes Blue-Eyed Child ofFortune all the more attractive . The introduction stands as the best biography we currently have of Shaw. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune is simply a necessary book. BOOK REVIEWS2ÓI Because of the movie Glory, Shaw is better known than perhaps ever before. Yet, as these letters show, the historic Shaw was much different than the one the film portrayed. He was less somber, less moralistic, and initially less dedicated to abolition and black rights. Shaw was imbued with a good deal of snobbery, directed particularly toward the Irish, and, even though he came from an old abolitionist family, with the racist bias that characterized his times. Shaw's mother, a strong-minded woman, arranged the first publication of his letters, and she was careful to preserve her son's heroic image at the expense of distorting the historical record. She edited the letters so that some of Shaw's hesitations and contradictions disappeared. While she permitted his anti-Irish bias to show through, she removed derogatory remarks about African Americans. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune returns the historic Shaw to us. The letters trace Shaw's military career from his brief service in a New York regiment at the beginning of the war until the final charge at Fort Wagner . Most of this time he served with the 2d Massachusetts in the Army of the Potomac. Then Governor Andrews of Massachusetts called him to command the 54th Massachusetts, intended to be the showcase regiment of black Northerners. The letters present Shaw as a decent young man, an...