?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
LETTER FROM HERO OF ALL-BLACK 54TH REGIMENT TO HIS FATHER (CIVIL WAR.) SHAW, ROBERT GOULD. Autograph Letter Signed, "In haste your loving Son / Robert G. Shaw," to his father ("Dear Father"), discussing his visit to Effie [Josephine Shaw Lowell, Shaw's sister and wife of Charles Russell Lowell] with Annie Agassiz [daughter-in-law of Louis Agassiz], thanking for books, reporting that "Cousin" John [M. Forbes, not a blood relation] will relate the positions to which [Senator Henry] Wilson had applied on Shaw's behalf as soon as he learns anything, expecting to depart for Washington on Saturday, and promising to write his mother. 1 page, 4to, ruled paper, with integral blank; blank mounted to larger sheet, folds. "Camp Andrew" [Boston], 13 June 1861
". . . I drove Annie Agassiz over to Milton the day before and saw Effie. She looks very well indeed. She gave me the package from Mother for which I am much obliged. Please tell Mother that I should like to keep the books & am very glad she sent them. "Cousin John said he would let me know what Mr. Wilson had applied for, for me, as soon as he could find out. "We shall probably start a week from Saturday for Washington. I haven't been able to ascertain how we shall go. I will write to Mother soon." With--Three items: Sarah Blake Shaw [Shaw's mother]. ALS, "S.B. Shaw," to Anna Chandler, sending a magazine [not present], recalling that Norwood Penrose Hallowell commanded an all-Black regiment [the 55th Massachusetts, soon after serving as Lt. Colonel under Shaw], promising to send notes to his son's widow, and remarking: "[N]ever at any time during the war did my son, his father & mother, or sisters, ever feel any of that anger and bitterness against the South which many persons were heard to express--we knew that the existence of slavery, & even the war itself, was as much the result of wrongdoing in the free states as in the slave states, for 50 years before, the whole country should have listened to the words of Jefferson and worked together to get rid of such an anomaly as slaves in our great republic." 4 pages, small 8vo, written on folded sheet. New York, 29 April 1891 • Charles William Eliot. TLS, "Charles W. Eliot," as President of Harvard, to Anna Chandler, sending the letter by Shaw contained in this lot, explaining the importance of the letter and the people mentioned, and remarking that the letter was obtained from Shaw's mother. 1¼ page, 4to, written on recto and verso of single sheet. Cambridge, 15 April 1891 • (Robert Gould Shaw.) Cabinet card photograph, unsigned, vignetted bust portrait from a photograph by John Adams Whipple showing him in ¾ view wearing colonel's uniform. 6½x4½ inches (image), 7x5 inches overall, mount edges gilt; mount is mounted to larger sheet. Circa 1861. The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was the second African-American regiment--after the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment--authorized by the Emancipation Proclamation.
