How the 1989 Film Glory Helps Expose an Epic Myth

I set out to evaluate the merit, or lack thereof, of the 1989 Edward Zwick film, Glory. Along the way, I discovered a powerful and, frankly, breathtaking myth that was created in the aftermath of the Civil War. Never in my earlier education in grade school, high school, or at New York University had I run across the suggestion I found in Bruce Chadwick's book, The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film. In the introduction to his book, Chadwick asserts that in order for the country to heal and reunify in the wake of this tragic war, "the Civil War's political and cultural history almost had to be rewritten so that the Southerners would never again be seen as harsh slaveowners [sic] or as the people who started - and lost - the war" (10). It seems that the only way reunification of North and South could succeed was "for the war to be seen in the rearview mirror of history as a war not started by anyone, a conflict that had no winners or losers - just a tragic war in which men on both sides fought gallantly" (Emphasis added, Chadwick 10).

The war wasn't started by anyone? There were no winners or losers? As I considered these thoughts, I also reflected on what led me to this discovery in the first place - namely, my examination of the film Glory, which tells the previously untold story of African American soldiers fighting for the Union army in the Civil War. The contribution of African American soldiers to the Union victory is another piece of history with which I was completely unfamiliar until the first time I saw Glory. There was never any mention of black soldiers fighting for the North in any of my history classes. As I put these two pieces of information together - the untold story of black soldiers in the Civil War and a myth created to help the country reunify - I began to see how this epic myth of no winners or losers in the Civil War might have paved the way to Jim Crow laws and partially explain why it took until 1954 - nearly 90 years after the end of the Civil War - for the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, and nearly 100 years for the historic civil rights acts of 1964. If there is, indeed, any connection between this epic myth and the plague of racism that still infects our country, then Glory not only tells a great and essential truth about African American soldiers and their contribution to the Union victory in the Civil War; but it also, perhaps more importantly, helps expose a much larger, and far more deeply buried truth that has been obscured by nearly 150 years of embracing a myth created to help ensure the reunification of our country following its most devastating war.

Let's begin with the movie Glory, which is where I began my inquiry. I was interested in learning about the genesis of the film, and Chadwick's book provided as clear an answer as any with a story that beautifully illustrates the power of art to move and motivate people to action. With this account, we learn how Glory producer Freddie Fields first got the idea for the film:

Fields, a veteran Hollywood producer, happened to be in Boston one day in 1986 and, unable to catch a cab, decided to cut across Boston Common to his hotel. On the way, he walked past the [Saint-Gaudens] monument to the black Fifty-fourth Massachusetts regiment there. "I had the same view of the Civil War as everyone else - Lincoln and the North beat the South and freed the slaves. I never knew blacks actually fought in it... I knew the 125th anniversary of the war was coming up and thought right away that this would make a great movie, the unknown story finally told," he said. (280)

Thus one work of art, dedicated in 1897, inspired the creation of another work of art more than 90 years later: the film Glory, produced by Fields, directed by Edward Zwick, and featuring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and, Morgan Freeman. Glory tells an important, and, at the time it was released, largely unknown story of African Americans fighting for the Union side in the American Civil War, and in so doing, it contributes to a deeper understanding of this critical piece of American history; and, ultimately contributes to what Chris Hedges has termed in his book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, the "recovery of memory" (122). Any historical inaccuracies the film contains - and there are several - are outweighed by an essential truth the film communicates to an ill informed American public.

Before discussing the relative merits and flaws of Glory in any detail, it will be helpful to recall some history that sets the film in context. In early 1863, two years into Lincoln's presidency, "the war continued to go badly for the Union" (Chadwick 282). The previous September saw the battle of Antietam, that led to "6,000 soldiers on both sides... dead and an additional 17,000... wounded," writes Doris Kearns Goodwin in her Lincoln Prize winning book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (481). Goodwin goes on to explain, "The victory, incomplete as it was, was the long-awaited event that provided Lincoln the occasion to announce his plans to issue an Emancipation Proclamation the following January" (481). As he was about to sign the important document on January 1st of 1863, President Lincoln is quoted as having said, "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it" (Goodwin 499). Three weeks after this proclamation, a major shift occurred in "the Union war effort - the organization and deployment of black regiments that would eventually amount to 180,000 soldiers" (Goodwin 548). Frederick Douglass, who assisted in recruiting black soldiers to the new regiments, "had long believed that the war would not be won so long as the North refused 'to employ the black man's arm in suppressing the rebels'" (Goodwin 549). President Lincoln himself, despite earlier resistance to the notion of arming blacks, was deeply supportive of the effort, writing, "The colored population is the great available and yet un-availed of force for restoring the Union... The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once" (Emphasis in original, Goodwin 549).

The film Glory opens with a depiction of then Captain Robert Gould Shaw at the critical battle of Antietam, where he is slightly wounded by a shot to the neck. The horrific battle and the enormous loss of life aged Shaw well beyond his 23 years. Glory quickly advances time to a fictionalized scene in which Shaw is offered the commission of Colonel of a new black regiment, the Massachusetts 54th. Critics of Glory hold quite divergent views regarding the historical validity and overall value of the film, agreeing on little other than, as the noted Civil War historian James M. McPherson wrote in The New Republic, "Except for Shaw, the principal characters in the film are fictional" (27). The significance of this fact is a matter of debate among critics. In his review for the Boston Globe, critic Jay Carr writes, "the success of 'Glory' stems from the fact that it's able to avoid the mistake made by such films as 'Cry Freedom' and 'Mississippi Burning,' and not focus mostly on its white characters." (Emphasis added, 36). David Nicholson, of the Washington Post, expresses an opposite opinion, asserting, "Watching 'Glory,' however, is a little like looking at a photograph of a group of blacks and whites where the whites are front and center and in focus, while the blacks remain at the edges, in shadow and slightly blurry" (G1). And, Richard Bernstein, in the New York Times opines, "Most of the black soldiers in the film are fictional, perhaps only because the historical records provide very little information about them" (15). Finally, in his essay for the scholarly journal, Access: History, Matthew Dixon chides the filmmakers for failing "to inform the audience that only one character in the main plot... is non-fictional" (88).

Certainly, it is true that there are numerous historical inaccuracies in Glory. A partial list of things that were either left out of the film or that were simply historically inaccurate would include the following:

- Shaw was not offered his commission as Colonel while at a party in Boston, but "actually received the offer to command the 54th in a letter taken to him by his father while Shaw was encamped in Virginia with his regiment (the 2nd Massachusetts)" (Horne 1142).
- Frederick Douglass "is presented in the film as a graying senior citizen, whereas in 1863 he was in his mid-forties" (Horne 1142).
- "In the film, the 54th charged southward against Fort Wagner, with the Atlantic Ocean on its left, when in actuality the attack proceeded northward" (Horne 1142).
- "It is true that the Fifty-fourth refused all pay, rather than accept unequal pay. But they did so at Shaw's suggestion, not by spontaneous eruption" (Finkelman 1108).
- The movie "ignored such real soldiers as Sgt. William Carney, who became the first black to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroics at the battle of Fort Wagner" (Finkelman 1108).
- The scene depicting the punishment of the character Trip by flogging would very likely not have occurred. As Paul Finkelman points out in The Journal of American History, "Whipping was banned in the Union army, and it would have been out of character for Colonel Shaw to have so callously ignored the feelings of his troops" (1108).
- And, Glory "implies - incorrectly - that most of the Fifty-fourth was made up of runaway slaves, when in fact it was made up of northern blacks, including two of Frederick Douglass's sons" (Finkelman 1108).

But, as McPherson notes in his essay for The New Republic, "This is a film not simply about the 54th Massachusetts, but about blacks in the Civil War. Most of the 178,000 black soldiers (and 10,000 black sailors) were slaves until a few months, even a few days, before they joined up" (27). There is, therefore, a higher or greater truth that the filmmakers were attempting to convey. The forgotten fact of the contributions of African American soldiers to the Union effort in the Civil War is more important than the minor historical inaccuracies and omissions to be found in Glory.

And, without conducting research to ascertain the merits or demerits of Glory, I would never have discovered another great truth - the truth of an epic myth that was created in the aftermath of the Civil War as the country struggled with the great and difficult challenge of reconciliation and reconstruction. In his book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges asserts, "national myths ignite a collective amnesia in war" (46). Is it not possible that a similar sort of collective amnesia might be created in the wake of a great and terrible war? Indeed, even before Lee's surrender at Appomattox effectively ended the Civil War, President Lincoln counseled in his Second Inaugural Address:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. (Emphasis added, Goodwin 699)

With this speech, Lincoln foreshadowed how he would approach reconciliation and reunification when the time came.

Doris Kearns Goodwin describes the scene in Washington D.C. the day after the Confederate surrender. There was great rejoicing in the North and several thousand revelers gathered at the White House, shouting demands for Lincoln to speak. (Goodwin 726) Goodwin relates a remarkable story about what happened when Lincoln finally appeared to address the crowd: Lincoln said, "I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves" (727). He then turned to the band that was present and requested that they play "Dixie," saying, "I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard" (Goodwin 727). As Goodwin explains, "In requesting the patriotic song of the South, Lincoln believed that 'it is good to show the rebels that with us they will be free to hear it again'" (727).

A complete examination of how and why this post-Civil War myth was created is beyond the scope of this paper, however I would like to provide the reader with a few pieces of key evidence to bolster the case, and, to suggest a couple directions for further study on the matter. Introducing his book, Reunion Without Compromise - The South and Reconstruction: 1865-1868, Michael Perman writes, "At the close of the war there was a widespread feeling in the Northern press and among public figures that sensitive and generous treatment of the rebels would be more likely to produce reconciliation and a permanent settlement than hard measures" (3). J. Michael Quill, in his book Prelude to the Radicals: The North and Reconstruction During 1865, characterizes how people in the North felt following Lee's surrender, noting "The dominant theme intrinsic to that pervasive feeling of thanksgiving was the theme of peace: the salving and healing of wounds, the resumption of private concerns, and magnanimity toward the defeated foe" (8). Quill also observes that most "believed that with slavery eliminated by the war, the cause of dissension and disharmony between North and South had also been eradicated" (9). Chadwick writes of the emergence of "a battalion of revisionist historians intent on absolving the Confederacy of all blame for the Civil War," noting, "If enough people said slavery did not cause the war, then it did not" (31). Chadwick also rightly observes that while "efforts at mythmaking... had the goal of reunification and nationalism," the most important effect of this mythmaking has been the erasing of "the fundamental cause of the war and all its death and destruction - slavery" (14). And, the prominent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. has suggested this myth "was created to soothe the wounds of Southerners, [such] that they 'won on the screen what they lost on the battlefield'" (qtd. in Chadwick 13).

Reviewing The Reel Civil War for the New York Times Book Review, James McPherson confirmed many of Chadwick's assertions, writing, "That the Confederacy fought for slavery and the destruction of the United States as one nation cannot be mentioned, for that would hinder reconciliation and reunion. The historical reality -- that Confederates started the war by firing on Fort Sumter -- is almost never suggested" in most Civil War films (19). Reviewing the same book for the Chicago Tribune, Benjamin L. Alpers notes that Hollywood's Civil War films were frequently "based on a plantation myth that uncritically celebrated a romanticized old South" and "tended to present blacks in incredibly degrading ways" (3). Interestingly, he also expresses his skepticism around the entire idea of films being perceived by audiences as representative of actual history, noting that the "only extensive sociological study of American popular attitudes toward history revealed that people consider film and TV to be among the least-reliable sources for information about the past" (3).

It is in this context of more than 100 years of the American people believing in a myth created to aid in the reunification of our fractured country that one should most fairly approach and judge Glory.

James McPherson, writing in The New Republic, suggests if the images of "Glory can replace that of moonlight and magnolias in Gone With the Wind as America's cinematic version of the Civil War, it will be a great gain for truth" (27). In his story, "How to Tell a True War Story," author and Vietnam Veteran Tim O'Brien states, "In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen" (71). In response to her critics, Kim Pierce, the director of the highly praised 1991 film Boys Don't Cry, averred, "You can change facts. You can change characters. You can change everything in search of the truth" (qtd. in Chadwick 5). And, in the bonus materials accompanying the DVD of Glory, Matthew Broderick quotes director Edward Zwick as saying, "sometimes facts are the enemy of drama" (Glory Commentary). Each of these quotes suggest what I call an essential truth - a truth that is deeper and more important than literal truth because of its ability to engage an audience in history and, hopefully, to inspire those audiences to learn more about that which was previously unknown. Indeed, the story dramatized in Glory was so obscure that neither the producer, director, nor the stars of the film knew the story prior to working on the film (Chadwick 280).

I believe that the essential truth Glory seeks to convey more than makes up for its historical inaccuracies, because it succeeded in explosing a great many people to an unknown and important piece of American history. John David Smith, in his introduction to Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era, notes "Glory has raised scholarly and public consciousness of the vital role and varied experiences of African American soldiers in the Union war effort" (Smith xiii-xiv). Writing in the foreword to Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, William S. McFeely characterizes Glory as an, "excellent fictional account of the Fifty-fourth that did... much to awaken Americans to knowledge of the critical participation of African Americans in their own liberation" (xiii). Gerald Horne, writing in the American Historical Review declares, "With Glory... Hollywood finally gets this chapter in history right. Only 125 years after the Civil War, millions in this nation finally are seeing a more complete version of its military history. Glory merits the plaudits it has garnered and deserves much, much more" (1143). And finally, in its review of Glory, The Economist notes, "Glory corrects a great historical injustice by recalling the forgotten sacrifices of the 180,000 blacks in the Union army" (103). I believe that Glory accomplished not only that worthy goal, but also helps reveal the truth of a deeply powerful myth created in the wake of the Civil War. While the myth was created to aid in the reconciliation and reunification of a battered and bruised nation, it also served to subjugate and marginalize African American citizens of the United States, effectively erasing their important role in the history of the Civil War. Our continued difficulty in overcoming racial divides in this country is sad testament to the notion that we remain, more than 140 years after the end of the Civil War, a nation divided in too many ways.

There is an old Chinese proverb, sometimes attributed to Confucius, which counsels "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names." It seems to me that our society would do well to embrace this lesson in regards to our own history by working to shatter the epic myth of the causes and effects of the Civil War. While it might have been necessary to support reconciliation and reunification efforts in 1865, it is hard to see what positive purpose it serves early in the 21st Century. In War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges writes, "The whole truth may finally be too hard to utter, but the process of healing only begins when we are able to at least acknowledge the tragedy and accept our share of the blame" (141). Surely we have waited long enough to begin healing the wounds of the Civil War by embracing the truth and rejecting the myth.

Works Cited

Alpers, Benjamin L. "Questioning Hollywood's depictions of the Civil War." Rev. of The Reel Civil War, by Bruce Chadwick. Chicago Tribune. 16 September 2001, Final Edition:3. ProQuest Newspapers. December 15, 2006.

Bernstein, Richard. "Heroes of 'Glory' fought Bigotry Before All Else." New York Times. 17 December 1989, Late Edition Final, Sec. 2:15.

Carr, Jay. "Glory: War Film Filled With Terrible Beauty." Rev. of Glory, by Edward Zwick. Boston Globe. 12 January 1990, City Edition, Sec. Arts & Film:36.

Chadwick, Bruce. The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Dixon, Matthew "Historical Films: Myth and Reality." Access: History. Spring 1997, Vol. 1, No. 1: 81-92.

The Economist. "Can Great Cinema be Good History? Clouds of Glory." Rev. of Glory, by Edward Zwick. 20 January 1990, Books and Arts:103.

Finkelman, Paul. Rev. of Glory, by Edward Zwick. The Journal of American History. December 1990, Vol. 77, No. 3:1108. JSTOR November 19, 2006.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Glory. Dir. Edward Zwick. Perf. Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, and Morgan Freeman. DVD. TriStar Pictures, 1989.

Hedges, Chris. War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. New York: Anchor Books-Random House, 2003.

Horne, Gerald. Rev. of Glory, by Edward Zwick. The American Historical Review. October 1990, Vol. 95, No. 4:1141-1143. JSTOR November 19, 2006.

McFeely, William S. Foreword. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Col. Robert Gould Shaw. Robert Gould Shaw. Ed. Russell Duncan. New York: Avon Books, 1992.

McPherson, James M. "The 'Glory' story: the 54th Massachusetts and Civil War." The New Republic. Jan. 8, 1990 Vol. 202: 22-27.

---. "Klieg Lights and Magnolias." Rev. of The Reel Civil War, by Bruce Chadwick. New York Times Book Review. 30 September 2001, Late Edition - Final, Sec. 7; Book Review Desk:19. Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe. December 15, 2006.

Nicholson, David. "What Price 'Glory'?" Rev. of Glory, by Edward Zwick. Washington Post. 21 January 1990, Final Edition, Sec. Sunday Show:G1.

O'Brien, Tim. "How To Tell A True War Story." The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990.

Perman, Michael. Reunion Without Compromise - The South and Reconstruction: 1865-1868. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Quill, J. Michael. Prelude to the Radicals: The North and Reconstruction During 1865. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980.

Smith, John David. Introduction. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era. Ed. John David Smith. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002.