Black soldiers in the Civil War

It is something like160 years since the citizens of Boston watched the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment march through the town on their way to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. There was something very special about the event: the six hundred strong 54th was one of the first all-Black regiments in the Union army.

Glory (directed by Edwar Zwick, 1989) follows the 54th through its training period, its first combat experience at the battle of Antietam to the bloody assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold at the mouth of Charleston harbour. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) was the real life commander of the 54th — a white man, as were all the commanders of Black units in the Union army.

In the ranks, the film focuses on Private Silas Tip (Denzel Washington) and Sergeant Major John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman), both of whom struggle to get the raw recruits into shape and overcome the prejudices within the Union ranks. Many whites believe that Black soldiers cannot fight in a disciplined army but Shaw believes strongly in the ability of the men he commands and volunteers the 54th to lead the attack on Fort Wagner.

The Fort is heavily fortified and can only be attacked by accessing a strip of sand and shingle about one hundred yards wide. All the soldiers know that some of them will die in the assault. They march into battle cheered on by the white Union soldiers who now see that their prejudices were unfounded. The fighting is ferocious on both sides. Neither gives an inch and ultimately the 54th is forced to withdraw, having lost half their personnel, including Gould. Fort Wagner held out as a Confederate stronghold till the end of the Civil War, but the bravery of the 54th ensured that more Black regiments were recruited to the Union cause.

Ultimately, over 180,000 Black-Americans volunteered to fight, many of them escaped slaves but also, as with the 54th, a large number of freemen born in the North.

Glory is without a doubt the best film about the American Civil War and a powerful antidote, if one were still needed, to the vacuous mythology of the glorious Old South as portrayed, for example, in that waste of celluloid and crinoline Gone with the Wind.