Whitney was an accomplished portraitist, completing statues and busts of such well known individuals as John Keats, Samuel Adams, Toussaint l'Ouverture, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Frances Willard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Sewall, Alice Freeman Palmer, Robert Gould Shaw, Eben Norton Horsford, Harriet Martineau, Jennie McGraw Fiske, Lucy Stone and others.
The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Afro-American 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry stands at Beacon and Park Streets, the northeast corner of the Common, opposite the State House.
He married Sarah Susannah Shaw (1839–1926), sister of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw; he was the author of New York to Delhi (New York, 1858).
George Bernard Shaw | Robert Louis Stevenson | Robert De Niro | Robert E. Lee | Robert Mugabe | Robert Redford | Robert Burns | Robert Bosch GmbH | Robert | Robert A. Heinlein | Robert Schumann | Robert Browning | Robert Rauschenberg | Robert Plant | Robert Altman | Robert Mitchum | Robert Frost | Robert Southey | Robert F. Kennedy | Robert Maxwell | Robert Graves | Robert E. Howard | Elliott Gould | Robert Fripp | Robert Fisk | Robert Rodriguez | Robert Motherwell | Robert Lowell | Robert Johnson | Robert Duvall |
The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which was one of the first official African-American units in the United States Army and was commanded by Col. Robert G. Shaw, was assembled and trained at Camp Meigs in Readville.
On July 18, 1863, Brigadier General George Crockett Strong ordered an attack by Chatfield in cooperation with Haldimand S. Putnam, Quincy Adams Gillmore, Robert Gould Shaw, and Truman Seymour on Confederate Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina south of the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina.