One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment/Movie Tie in to the Movie "Glory" [Paperback]

Peter Burchard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1990

Traces the history of the Union's first Black regiment and discusses their influence on the war.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (January 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031204643X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312046439
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #571,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really more a biography than the title implies, March 22, 2004

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment/Movie Tie in to the Movie "Glory" (Paperback)

This book was at least partially the basis for the movie Glory, which starred Morgan Freeman, Cary Elwes, Matthew Broderick, and Denzel Washington (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). The movie is reasonably historically accurate, though there are parts where they took liberties with the truth. The book sets the record straight in a number of ways.

The book, however, is largely a biography of Robert Gould Shaw. Shaw was born a child of privalege, and raised to be an abolitionist and a devout Christian. When the war started, he saw it as his duty to enlist, first serving in the ranks of a New York regiment, and later securing appointment as a Captain in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry. When the Emancipation Proclamation was announced and the recruiting of Black soldiers began (this was part of the actual proclamation) the governor of Massachussetts decided to recruit his own regiment of Blacks, and appointed Shaw to be the colonel. The regiment served briefly in the siege of Charleston, South Carolina, before leading the charge on Fort Wagner, to the south of the city, in which Shaw was killed and the regiment decimated.

This book, as I said, is mostly a biography of Shaw. Since he wasn't anyone particularly prominent, and since he only lived to be 25, there's not a lot to say, and the book is as a result rather short, about 150 pages. Shaw comes off as committed, intelligent, perhaps a bit naive, but brave and skilled. It's an interesting character study, and an interesting but brief account of this one action in the siege of Charleston. There isn't, however, much else to the book, so be warned, it's rather thin. If that's what interests you, however, it's worth the effort.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the Read!!!, February 23, 2002

By 

Katherine (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment/Movie Tie in to the Movie "Glory" (Paperback)

Having seen the movie Glory for the first time this past weekend, I couldn't help but wonder about the 54th and its Colonel Shaw. So, when I got my hands on this book I had very high expectations. I have to say that I was very happy with the quality of this book. It has just enough sentiment for Colonel Shaw and his family, yet it also portrays the 54th as the heroes I believe they were. I would recommend this to any history buff, or to anyone who finds that they had the same thirst as I after seeing Glory on television. Great book..

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing a Hero to life, November 21, 2000

By 

joan a. shelton - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment/Movie Tie in to the Movie "Glory" (Paperback)

Matthew Broderick portrayed Robert Gould Shaw, in the movie "Glory," as shy, idealistic, tenacious. In real life he was all these things and more: more complex, more a product of his age and social class (what we today call "classism" was universal then), struggling to escape the iron grip of his abolitionist mother, wrestling with notions of race which we today would call "racism." Burchard's book is still the best for bringing him back to life: sharing army life with his friends, courting his future wife, organizing and forming the first black regiment to serve as a regiment of the line (the rest were mostly used for bushwhacking or manual labor). He surely knew before accepting the job that he would face unpopularity, uncertainty, and execution if captured. Twenty-five-year-old Robert showed awesome moral courage in taking it on, and one of the virtues of this book is that it makes Robert's record believable, first in his choice, and then in sticking with loneliness, exhaustion, discouragement, fear of death, and obstacle after obstacle, to prove that "Black Men can fight as well as White Men" and therefore can meet the coming demands of citizenship. Another virtue, for older students maybe, lies in its portrayal of the "classism" and "racism" which formed the unexamined background of most Americans in the 1860's, against which we can measure how far we've really evolved since then. All in all, an excellent book for young people in American History courses, to supplement the movie "Glory" which is often used to illustrate the Civil War and its human side.