How historical accuracy was the movie Glory?

Answer 1

Glory, the epic account of the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first all-black regiments in the Civil War, contains numerous historical inaccuracies. Some of them are minor. For instance, the regiment’s climactic assault against Battery Wagner, the Confederate stronghold guarding Charleston harbor, actually took place from south to north, rather than north to south as depicted in the movie. But many of the inaccuracies are major. Robert Gould Shaw, played in the movie by Matthew Broderick, was not Governor Andrew’s first choice to command the regiment. When the command was offered him, he hesitated before deciding to accept. More seriously from the standpoint of historical accuracy, the 54th, portrayed in the movie as made up largely of runaway slaves like John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) or Private Trip (Denzel Washington) was in fact, a regiment of freedmen, like Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher), recruited not only from Massachusetts but New York and Pennsylvania as well. Two of Frederick Douglass’s sons were among the first to volunteer for the 54th and Lewis Douglass, the elder son, served from the outset as the regiment’s sergeant-major. At the time of the Civil War, most Southerners believed that blacks were naturally servile. But there was doubt about their manly spirit in the North as well. In the movie, a reporter from Harper’s Monthly says to Matthew Broderick’s Col. Shaw, "will they fight? A million readers want to know." To which Shaw replies, "a million and one," illustrating the fact that in 1863, even elite New England abolitionists had their doubts about the manliness of blacks. By inaccurately depicting the 54th as a regiment of former slaves, Glory reveals the deeper truth that blacks in general were not the natural slaves that Southerners believed them to be and that abolitionists feared that they might be. "Who asks now in doubt and derision, ’Will the Negro fight?’" observed one abolitionist after the assault of the 54th against Battery Wagner. "The answer is spoken from the cannon’s mouth...it comes to us from...those graves beneath Fort Wagner’s walls, which the American people will never forget."