Evening, May 27, 1864

My Dear Uncle:
  After four or five days, I again take pleasure in writing you that I am still safe and well.  Skirmishing going on daily.  it seems that we can not come to a general engagement...I leave now for a skirmish myself for 24 hours.  Goodbye until tomorrow evening.

It was Roderick Shaw's last letter.  The following day he was leading his regiment's skirmishers when he was struck in the "upper part of the breast near the throat causing his death almost instantly."  A comrade, A.M. Harris, wrote to Shaw's family describing his burial:

...owing to the general engagement which came off on the evening of the same day that he was killed it was impossible to obtain and ambulance or transportation of any other kind farther than 5 miles to the rear, a point at which our commissary and cooking detail were stationed.  The weather being very warm and in the absence of any prospect to get the body off, Maj. Weekly our Brigade commissary had a grave dug in a place which I understand will be easy to point out on the Marietta and Dallis road.  Enclosed I send you a list of persons who were present at the burial and who I understand can at any future day point out the place... the headboard for Roddie I cut out myself and the letters were carved in the board and blacked with ink... He was a bold, gallant and fearless soldier, too much so for skirmishing, he exposed himself entirely too much.

  On the night of May 27, Sgt. Maj. Washington Ives of the 1st & 4th Florida shared a blanket with Lts. Shaw and James Kilpatrick.  He later recalled that both of the men had awakened during the night, having dreamed that they would shortly be killed.  The two officers gave instructions as to the disposition of their personal effects.  Ives wrote;  "I endeavored to cheer them, insisting that no confidence could be placed in dreams, but my efforts only confirmed them."  The following day, both Kilpatrick and Shaw were killed.