This page last updated 12 February, 2020.
US
History through Film
Glory
*In
the battle of Fredericksburg, the Union suffered over 13,000
casualties, compared to about 4,200 for the Confederacy. Burnside retreated
across the river on 15 December, 1862, and was replaced soon
afterwards by Joseph Hooker, who had also led forces at
Antietam.
*In
the New Year, the Union Army began accepting African-American
volunteers. About
180,000 Coloured troops ultimately served during the way,
often bravely despite poor treatment by much of the US Army
(including unequal pay) and the knowledge that they would be
killed if captured by the South.
*This
decision was also controversial in the North, where prejudice
against African-Americans made some people fear giving them
guns. Furthermore,
many Northerners had gone to war to preserve the Union, and
some were not eager to die to free the slaves. In particular, some
members of the Northern working class worried that freed
slaves would come North and compete with them for jobs, since
they would presumably be willing to work for lower wages. This fear was
particular acute among Irish immigrants, who had come to the
United States in large numbers starting in the mid-1840s, and
who already faced a great deal of discrimination.
--Introduce
Glory
-Glory was released
in 1989. It
tells the story of the creation and early battles of the 54th
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, one of the first
African-American units formed in the US Army (the 1st
Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment was slightly
older, and some individual officers occupying parts of the
South had formed Black units on their own earlier). The movie was
based in part on the book One Gallant Rush,
published in 1965 by Peter Burchard about the 54th
Massachusetts. Glory was also
partly inspired by the book Lay this Laurel by Lincoln Kirstein, published
in 1973 about the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston,
which was unveiled in 1897 and depicts the first commander
of the 54th Massachusetts and his men. The movie also
draws from the letters of Robert Gould Shaw, although some
of the letters that are read as voice-over narration
throughout the film, were actually taken from Army Life in a Black
Regiment, an 1870 book by Thomas Higginson, who
commanded the 1st South Carolina Regiment during
the Civil War.
-The movie opens in
September, 1862 at the Battle of Antietam, where Robert
Gould Shaw encounters combat for the first time. After returning
home to Boston, he is asked to take command of the 54th
Massachusetts, which would be formed in March, 1863 (so that
when the movie shows them celebrating Christmas together in
1862, that is not correct).
Furthermore, originally, the Governor of
Massachusetts meant to recruit only free African-Americans,
so the movie’s portrayal of many of the soldiers as former
slaves is also inaccurate.
The movie continues through the first major battle
fought by the 54th Massachusetts.
-Overall, the costumes
and props are accurate.
-The movie was
primarily filmed in Georgia and in Massachusetts, although
footage from a re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in
Pennsylvania was also used, and so in the early battle
scenes the grass is sometimes green and sometimes it is
brown, where footage filmed in different places at different
times of the year was edited together.
-Robert Gould Shaw is
the main character in the movie, and is based fairly
accurately on a real person who was a member of a family of
prominent abolitionists.
The movie does leave out that he got married during
the time the movie is set.
-The other major
characters in the movie are fictional (although several of
the secondary characters are real), and some historians have
criticised the fact that the main African-American
characters in a movie about the heroism of African-American
soldiers are either completely made up or heavily
fictionalised. In
particular, it is unfortunate that the movie leaves out
Sergeant William Carney, one of the first African-Americans
to win the Medal of Honor.
The 54th Massachusetts also included two
of Frederick Douglass’s sons, Charles and Lewis. Charles later
transferred to the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry to become its 1st sergeant, while Lewis
was the sergeant major of the 54th and was wounded in
the assault on Fort Wagner.
Frederick Douglass, junior worked as a recruiter of
Black soldiers for the Army.
-Cabot Forbes is a
fictional friend of Robert Shaw who becomes
second-in-command of the 54th Massachusetts. He is loosely
based on Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Hallowell, who would later
command the 54th Massachusetts himself after
surviving a serious wound in the Battle of Fort Wagner.
-Thomas Searles is a
fictional free black man from Boston who has known Shaw and
Forbes for many years.
He is the first volunteer for the 54th
Massachusetts.
-John Rawlins is a
fictional former slave who works as a gravedigger and then
enlists in the 54th Massachusetts.
-Jupiter Sharts is a
fictional former slave who enlists in the 54th
Massachusetts.
-Silas Trip is a
fictional former slave who enlists in the 54th
Massachusetts.
-Sergeant-Major Mulcahy
is a fictional Irish character who trains the new volunteers
in the 54th Massachusetts.
--Show Glory
-#3 shows how in both the United States and
Confederate armies, soldiers often elected their own
non-commissioned and commissioned officers up through the rank
of captain, and sometimes up to the rank of colonel. This practise was
significantly reduced in the US Army by 1863, because men who
campaigned to become officers often did not end up
disciplining their men effectively, but it was never
completely eliminated in the US Army and remained common in
the Confederate army until the end of the war.
-#5 is correct. The Emancipation Proclamation did not
free slaves in the Border States or in most parts of other
Southern states that had already been re-occupied by the
Union. This was done to try to keep those areas loyal, and
because the Constitution still protected slavery as a matter
of property law.
-#8 is mostly correct. On 30 August, 1861,
Union General John C. Fremont issued a proclamation basically
freeing all the slaves in the still-loyal state of Missouri,
but Lincoln countermanded the order and relieved Fremont of
command. On 9
May, 1862, General David Hunter declared all slaves in
Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida to be ‘forever free,’ but
Lincoln revoked that, too, partly because there were a few
pro-Union slave-owners in the area who complained. However, back on 27
May, 1861, General Benjamin Butler had declared that escaping
male slaves who reached Union lines would be considered
contraband—war materials subject to seizure as a war
measure—and not be returned to slavery, and Congress confirmed
this through a series of Confiscation Acts, allowing the Union
Army to free slaves owned by pro-Confederate Southerners in
rebellious areas.
-#9 shows Frederick Douglass, an escaped
slave who had become famous as a writer and public speaker,
eventually purchasing the freedom of himself and his family. Two of his sons
joined the 54th Massachusetts and his third son
recruited other Black volunteers for the Army.
-#10 and #11 are true, although the
regiment was not officially formed until March, 1863, a little
later than shown in the movie, and was originally planned to
include of free-born African-Americans, because the governor
of Massachusetts wanted the 54th to be an elite
unit, and he worried that former slaves would not be as good
as freeborn men. However,
it was hard to find enough freeborn Black men in
Massachusetts, and eventually some former slaves were
included, too. Also,
Shaw was asked to take command in a letter, not at a party,
and initially he did not want to, as he did not want to leave
his current regiment.
-#12 is a result of many Southern states
making it illegal to teach slaves to read, out of fears they
would read abolitionist literature. Besides, there was not much reason for a
slave-owner to teach most slaves to read, anyway. Furthermore,
education was not especially widespread in the South in
general.
-#16 is entirely possible. In both the
Northern and Southern armies, many soldiers being trained did
not know their left foot from their right foot, and so the
drill sergeants would tie a some hay to the left foot and some
straw to the right; then, setting the men to march, they would
chant, ‘Hay-foot, straw-foot, hay-foot, straw-foot’ until
everybody had caught on. A common name for a new recruit in
those days was ‘strawfoot.’
In the 21st Century, of course, most people
know their left from their right, but many do not know the
difference between hay (which still has seeds on it and is
used as feed) and straw (just the stalk of wheat, used for
bedding but not for feed).
-#17 is true. Many Irish immigrants worried that free
Blacks would compete with them for low-paying jobs, and
resented them, even more than most people at the time, when
prejudice was common.
-#18-20 are all true, and many Black
soldiers who surrendered were massacred rather than being
imprisoned.
-#21 is not quite right--they were .577
calibre--but it is true that both sides in the War used many
British-built Enfield rifle muskets.
-#22 was pretty common, as Black troops
were often not trusted in combat, as it was assumed they would
be cowardly. Many
White people were also not comfortable giving Black men guns.
-#27 is partly true; Fredericksburg was a
terrible loss for the Union, but Shaw would not have been with
the 54th
Massachusetts yet, as they had not
yet officially been formed.
-#29 shows Trip being flogged for desertion
(although he could have been executed for that). For the purpose of
filming the scene, the actor (Denzel Washington) was actually
whipped with a special whip that would hurt, but could not
actually cut him. To
get the best possible reaction, the director told the man
whipping him to whip a longer and harder than planned, so that
the tear shed in the scene is real.
-#32 does not even show how badly the Black
soldiers were short-changed.
Not only were they paid $10 a month rather than $13,
but they had $3 deducted for clothing (while White soldiers
were not charged a clothing allowance), so that Black soldiers
actually fought for $7 a month, although in 1864 Congress
voted to pay them equally and to give them back pay for the
months they had been paid less.
-#33-34 are basically true, although it was
actually Colonel Shaw's idea that no one in the regiment
accept pay as long as the Black soldiers were not paid
equally.
-#35 mentions Harper's Weekly, which was one of the
most widely-read and influential magazines in America. Although it had
avoided taking a strong stand on slavery before the Civil
War to avoid losing customers in the South, once the War
began, Harper's
Weekly became strongly
pro-Lincoln, pro-Union, and anti-slavery. However, the
reporter Edward Pierce who appears in the movie, although a
real reporter whom Shaw did interact with, actually wrote
for the New York Daily Tribune.
-#36 shows John Rawlins promoted to the
rank of Sergeant-Major.
This was the highest non-commissioned rank in the US
Army at the time. There
was only one per regiment, and in reality, the Sergeant-Major
of the 54th Massachusetts at
this time was Lewis Douglass, the third and youngest son of
Frederick Douglass, who was badly wounded in the Battle of
Fort Wagner, but survived.
There would not be a Black commissioned officer in
the US Army until former slave Henry Flipper graduated from
West Point in 1877 and was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant. Even
after that, Black officers would be very rare until well
into the 20th Century (and the Navy and Marine Corps would
not have any Black commissioned officers until late in World
War II).
-#37-42 introduce Colonel James Montgomery,
who did have command over the 54th Massachusetts. He had
always been strongly opposed to slavery and had fought in
Bleeding Kansas. As stated in the movie, he had earlier
lived in Kentucky, although he was actually born in Ohio and
moved to Kentucky with his parents at the age of 22. He
later moved to Kansas where he fought against pro-slavery
forces, and in 1859 he even considered leading a raid to free
John Brown from prison before he could be executed, but did
not because there was too much snow in western Pennsylvania at
that time, although it might not have mattered, because
another man who had fought in Kansas managed to sneak into the
prison where John Brown was being held and offered to help him
escape, but Brown refused, feeling he was too old (59) to live
a life on the run and preferring to die as a martyr. The
depiction of the destruction of Darien, Georgia, is fairly
accurate, although by the time the town was set on fire, the
residents had already fled the town. Montgomery thought
slave-owners must be punished for their sins, and really did
say that Southerners would 'be swept away by the hand of God,
like the Jews of old.'
-#44 is basically correct; Shaw was able to
get his men into battle thanks in part to the influence of his
father and other prominent abolitionists he knew.
-#48-49 portray General Charles Harker
deeply corrupt, and show Shaw using this to blackmail him into
sending the 54th Massachusetts into
battle. In
reality, General Harker was much younger than shown in the
movie (he was only about 25 at the time) and is not known to
have been involved in anything illegal or unethical. He died in combat
on Kennessaw Mountain in Georgia on 27 July, 1864.
-#50 mentions the 54th Massachusetts's first
battle, although not by name.
It was the Battle of Grimball's Landing on James
Island, South Carolina, on 16 July, 1863. Union forces had
landed on James Island to try to draw some Confederate
forces away from the defence of Fort Wagner, and some did
come to attack. Union
forces, including the 54th Massachusetts,
held off the Confederate attack, with the 54th losing 14 men
killed, 17 wounded, and 12 captured.
-#52 are both very important Union
victories in the War, sometimes considered the turning point
of the War.
-#56 is true--Fort Wagner (also known as
Battery Wagner) was one of the forts defending Charleston
Harbour, although at the time of the Second Battle of Fort
Wagner, it was actually defended by about 1,800 Confederates,
even more than the 1,000 stated in #57.
-#60 is true; Shaw did give his personal
letters to the reporter Edward Pierce, who took them back to
his family after the battle.
-#62 is close, but not quite right: the person who
asked the question was General George Crockett Strong who was
in overall command of the assault, and Colonel Shaw was the
man who responded. When
the flag bearer did fall, a Black soldier, Sergeant William
Carney, grabbed the flag and carried it all the way to the
bulwarks of Fort Wagner. He remained there under enemy fire
until the 54th was forced to retreat. Sergeant
Carney struggled back to Union lines with the flag, receiving
four wounds from which he recovered. This was the first action
for which a Black soldier was awarded the Medal of Honor. General Strong was
wounded in the battle himself, and died of tetanus twelve days
later. The
depiction of the battle itself is fairly accurate, although
the Union soldiers are shown approaching the fort from the
North, when they actually approached it from the South--it was
filmed that way because the lighting was better.
-#66 shows all the men killed in the attack
on Fort Wagner being buried in mass graves, with White
officers buried with their Black soldiers. The Confederates
considered this an insult, but Shaw's parents said they
considered it an honour.
However, Shaw was not buried in his full uniform--most
of his things were stripped from him, both as an insult and to
be kept as souvenirs, although a Confederate officer managed
to purchase Shaw's sword and sash from the man who had
originally looted them, and had them sent to Shaw's parents.
-#67 is not quite true, although it is
close--270 of the 600 men who charged Fort Wagner on 18 July,
1863 were killed, wounded or captured: Colonel Shaw was
one of the first to be killed, and 29 of his men died in the
attack, too; 24 more later died of their wounds, while 15 were
captured, 52 went missing in action and never accounted for,
and 149 were wounded. Furthermore,
many soldiers survived and the flag was not captured. Still, a 45%
casualty rate is still very high, and was the highest the 54th
ever suffered. Furthermore,
considering that the 54th Massachusetts was just
one of fourteen Union regiments involved in the attack, it is
thought that 1,515 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or
went missing in the battle, and the commander of Fort Wagner,
General Johnson Hagood, stated that he buried 800 men in mass
graves.
---The final text of the movie also states
that Fort Wagner was never taken. That is not entirely true. Although it was
never captured in a direct assault, the United States Navy
maintained a two-month bombardment of the fort starting before
the first assault by the Army and continuing until the
Confederates abandoned the fort on 7 September, 1863.
*After the great defeat at Fredericksburg,
General Burnside was replaced by replacement, ‘Fighting Joe’
Hooker. Under
pressure to achieve something, he soon moved against Lee, and
was defeated at Chancellorsville, Virginia on 2-3 May, 1863,
when Lee sent half of his army, under Stonewall Jackson, to
march around Hooker’s army and attack from one side, while Lee
attacked from the other side, nearly surrounding Hooker’s army
and ultimately forcing him to retreat despite having far more
men than the Confederates.
*However, after the first day of fighting,
Stonewall Jackson and some of his staff rode out into the
night to scout out the battlefield. When they returned, a North Carolina
unit in their own corps did not recognise them and fired upon
them. Jackson
was wounded three times, and had to have his arm amputated. Lee said ‘he has
lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.’ Jackson’s arm was
buried on the battlefield, and Jackson died a week later.
*Hooker was soon replaced by George Meade.
*Although saddened and concerned by the
loss of Jackson, Lee was very confident after the glorious
victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. He decided one
again to invade Pennsylvania, threaten Washington, D.C., and
force Lincoln to negotiate a peace. However, his own scouts did not keep him
informed of where the Union Army was.
*The Confederate Army collided with the
Union Army accidentally at Gettysburg on 1 July, 1863, where
they fought perhaps the most important battle of the war and
certainly the largest battle ever fought in North America.
*Over the three days of the battle, the US
Army fielded 83,000 men and the Confederate Army had 75,000,
although on both sides units arrived a few at a time, and had
either side had better information on the other's disposition,
they might have been able to pick them off one regiment or
division at a time.
*Throughout the battle, Lee’s corps
commanders often failed to follow his orders correctly. Had they done so,
Lee might have won the battle, and changed the course of the
war. Instead, he
was defeated with great loss of life, and on the 4th
of July, the
Army of Northern Virginia began a retreat to Virginia trailed
by a 17-mile long wagon train loaded with supplies and wounded
men. They never
left Virginia again.
*The total estimated US casualties were
23,000 with an estimated 28,000 Confederate casualties, or
51,000 American casualties in all. This was the largest battle ever
fought in North America.