The Morning Robert Gould Shaw Stepped Forward

On a January evening in 1863, Robert Gould Shaw sat at his family's dinner table in Boston when a letter arrived from Governor Andrew offering him command of the 54th Massachusetts — the first Black regiment raised in the North. Shaw was twenty-five. He had already seen the carnage at Antietam, already knew what war cost. His first instinct was to refuse. He wrote a letter of declination and handed it to the messenger.

Then something shifted. Shaw lay awake that night, confronted not by battlefield fear but by something fiercer — the weight of a cause so much larger than himself. He was a privileged young man from Beacon Hill. Who was he to lead men fighting for their own freedom? He felt utterly insufficient, undone by the magnitude of what was being asked.

By morning, Shaw sent a second letter. He accepted.

Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, the seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy," and the temple shaking to its foundations. His response was not courage but collapse: "Woe is me! I am undone." He knew he was unclean, unworthy, impossibly small before the Almighty. But after the burning coal touched his lips — after grace did what self-improvement never could — the voice of the Lord asked, "Whom shall I send?"