Where Death And Glory Meet Summary

In the book “Where Death and Glory Meet” by Russell Duncan the story of the young Colonel Robert Gould Shaw is being told. This is an interesting book about Shaw’s personal life and how he grew up in a great economic status, where he had the opportunity to travel to many different countries in the European continent. It also talks about how Shaw became the Colonel of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, which is the first to be only for African American soldiers. The author of this book focuses on events during the mid-nineteenth century in the United States, when the Civil War was going on between the North and the South. One important theme of this biography is racism, during this period there is a lot of people who still agreed with slaveholding …show more content…
Duncan depicts Shaw’s lack of interest in the cause of slavery, there were moments that he seem to take care, but at the end there was always something more important for him than slavery. One instance of that is when Duncan says “ He remained concerned about slavery and about his own future, but spent most of his time pursuing pleasure” (15). In Shaw’s mind slavery was a concern, but at the same time he did not care enough to take care or actually do something about it. All he cared about by this point in his life was to have the pleasure of going to other countries with his friends and his family instead of worrying about slavery or even about his future. There were other instances where Duncan show how Shaw wanted to get rid of slavery, when Duncan says “Shaw wanted to rid his nation of slavery but showed little interest in the people who were slaves” (21). He did not care about what slaves were going through during this time, he knew that it was wrong, but that was all, he did not care about the suffering of the people who were slaves, he cared about the image of his