For the Union Dead

poem by Lowell

Also known as: “Colonel Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th”

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Article History

For the Union Dead, title poem of a collection by Robert Lowell, published in 1964. Lowell originally titled the poem “Colonel Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th” to commemorate Robert Gould Shaw, a white Bostonian who had commanded a battalion of black Union troops during the American Civil War, and published it in the 1960 edition of Life Studies.

The poem alludes to three significant incidents of the previous 100 years: Shaw’s death and anonymous burial; the dedication, in Boston in the 1890s, of a memorial to Shaw and others who died for the Union; and the violent resistance to school integration in the contemporary United States.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.