The Essay

Submitted By rp93
Words: 1429
Pages: 6

The 54th infantry totally comprised of African-American men (apart from the officers).Racism has been focused in the film and the biased and discriminating attitude of the whites towards the black has been revealed vividly. But unlike other white officers Colonel Shaw wanted to train this African- American regiment to fight relentlessly in the civil war. The film reveals their fight against injustice and desire to prove themselves worthy of their country.
The regiment comprised of freed black men fighting for their country. Many were doubtful whether there was any need of such black regiment and also whether these men had capability enough to fight .But some like Fredrick Douglas felt that there was necessity of a black regiment and as many fighting men were there the chances of winning would increase.
The movie exposes many aspects of the civil war. It showed the cruel realities that the soldiers who fought the war had to experience. It revealed the wild and barbaric way of man to man fight that was practiced during the civil war. The film is like a historical testimonial and is also very accurate in description. The black soldiers had not only to fight the war but also deal with their prejudiced fellow white soldiers.
The southern economy was based on cotton and slavery. The political leaders were therefore against the abolition of slavery as that would bring about the collapse of the socio-economic system. Many of them were themselves slave owners. They felt that if the slave system was abolished and the freed men had to be paid at par with the white laborers then the economy would be much affected. Therefore apart from the moral issue the economic issue was also the cause of the civil war. The 54th regiment was built to make the blacks fight for their own cause. As they were considered inferiors it took so much time for the black regiment to form. Racism which was existent in the North focused in the movie when the black soldiers meet the white and they called the black, niggers and ridiculed them. The film also projects the fact the blacks were not allowed to get trained in military academies and they had white commanding officer to lead them.
Glory” tells the story of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the United States Civil War. The 54th was the most celebrated of all black units in the war because it was the first such regiment organized by the Union government. Moreover, the 54th fought in one of the war’s bloodiest encounters--an attack against Confederate Fort Wagner, also called Battery Wagner, in Charleston, South Carolina on 18 July 1863. While the film would have viewers believe that the 54th was composed mostly of ex-slaves, only one of its members grew up as a slave. Most were free northern African Americans, literate and skilled. The 54th was led, as all black troops were, by a white man, Robert Gould Shaw, the son of Boston abolitionists. Although the film contained numerous historical inaccuracies, its heart, as one historian put it, was in the right place. “Glory’s” greatest achievement was its reminder of the roles African American soldiers played in the outcome of the Civil War and in the abolition of slavery. When war began in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln made it clear that his goal was to restore the Union, and not to fight for emancipation. Very early on, however, Lincoln realized that unless he embraced a partial emancipation, the Union would very likely go down to defeat. Slavery was fundamental to the Confederate effort because slaves furnished the Confederacy with most of its noncombat labor. Slavery also was the soft underbelly of the Confederacy because of slaves’ opposition to the Confederacy. Slaves behaved as an internal enemy behind Confederate lines, and their actions greatly aided the Union effort. Very shortly after the war began, fugitive slaves, or “contraband,” as they came to be called, began fleeing to Union troops whenever they could.