For the Union Dead (1960). Content and Description

Asked to write a poem for the Boston Arts Festival, Lowell produced “For the Union Dead.” He read it at the festival in 1960 under the title “Colonel Shaw and the Massachusetts’ 54th,” included it in the first paperback edition of Life Studies, and then changed the title to “For the Union Dead” before publishing it in the Atlantic Monthly in 1960 and collecting it in the 1964 book of the same title.

As Lowell explained before reading it at the festival, the poem “is about childhood memories, the evisceration of our modern cities, civil rights, nuclear warfare and more particularly, Colonel Robert Shaw and his Negro regiment, the Massachusetts 54th” (Doreski 109). Through the image of “St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,” a monument memorializing the 54th infantry, Lowell works outward to touch on Boston’s social history in regard to its changing cultural values.

Some historical context helps bring out the poem’s significant political implications. After President Abraham Lincoln decided in 1863 to admit black soldiers into the Union Army, the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry became the first black regiment recruited in the North. Colonel Shaw, a white abolitionist from Boston, volunteered to command the unit. Under his leadership the 54th unsuccessfully attacked Fort Wagner in South Carolina. More than 250 of their soldiers died, including Shaw, but the North used the heroic story to encourage blacks to join Union forces. In 1897 Boston commemorated the event with a bronze bas- relief monument by Augustus Saint-Gauden, which included a quote from James Russell Lowell’s poem “Memoriae Positum R.G.S.”

Although not always an outspoken critic of racism, Lowell did make public comments about the importance of resolving racial conflict by ending systematic oppression. The epigraph to “For the Union Dead,” in fact, rewrites an inscription on the statue that translated means “he leaves all behind to protect the state.” Lowell’s version reads, “they leave. . . ,” thereby honoring the sacrifice each member of the infantry made. The poem itself does not serve as a corrective to the social ills Lowell points out but rather serves as an indictment. By describing Boston’s fallen mon- uments—the dilapidated aquarium, the girdled statehouse, the splinted Civil War statue—Lowell accuses his home city of failing to remember and honor its noble public history.

Unlike much of his earlier poetry, “For the Union Dead” looks to the city’s Brahmin past as an ethical model for its future. “Their monument sticks like a fishbone / in the city’s throat,” reminding everyone that we must remember the causes for which the 54th Infantry fought and died. The scope of the poem reaches from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, making the point that institutionalized racism still exists in America and in Boston. Lowell writes, “When I crouch to my television set, / the drained faces of Negro schoolchildren rise like balloons” (377). That image of rising balloons harks back to “the bubbles / drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish” in the second stanza and the “bell-cheeked Negro infantry” in the sixth stanza.

Not only does it draw a correlation between the schoolchildren and the captive fish, but it implicates Lowell in the white racism of American culture as well, by showing the similarly voyeuristic relationship he has to both fish and civil rights activists. His self-awareness shows a realization that even as a critic he is caught up in the “savage servility” that he denounces (378).

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Lowell’s mentor Allen Tate wrote “Ode to the Confederate Dead” in 1928. His agrarian poem presents the dilemma of a man standing at the gate of a Confederate graveyard. While he understands the impossibility of returning to the grandeur of a pre-Civil War South, he feels lost in the desolate present. Read both “Ode to the Confederate Dead” and “For the Union Dead” and discuss their similarities and differences. How does Lowell’s recontextualization of Tate’s theme produce new and different meanings?

2. In the epigraph Lowell makes a point of honoring all the men who served in the 54th Infantry. The poem proper, though, seems to give particular focus to Colonel Shaw himself, fleshing out the historical figure with descriptions of both his physical appearance and his character. What sort of historical realities might prevent Lowell from exploring the character of a specific black soldier? Does Lowell unduly glorify Shaw at the expense of the other soldiers by not addressing those realities?

3. The critic Paul Doherty points out a number of historical inaccuracies in “For the Union Dead.” For instance, he mentions that Lowell seems to attribute the use of the word niggers to Shaw’s father, when in fact, it was a Confederate officer who used the word to describe where Shaw was buried. Doherty, though, argues that Lowell achieves an ethical truth, even if specific facts mislead the reader. Do you think that an ethical truth is possible if an author does not take care to present information as accurately as possible? Outline what you understand the poem’s intent to be and formulate an argument to defend your position on the importance of historical accuracy in “For the Union Dead.”

4. In stanzas 14 and 15, Lowell mentions an advertisement for Mosler Safes that uses an image of Hiroshima. Apparently one of their safes survived the atomic explosion, a fact that Lowell does not believe justifies a commercial image of Hiroshima being bombed. Find an advertisement that somehow incorporates a political or historical event. What are the ad’s political implications? Citing specific examples from the poem, explain how the ad you found does or does not relate to Lowell’s critical depiction of a society overrun by commercial incentive in “For the Union Dead.”