Glory - Movie Review

The movie Glory was mainly about the 54th Massachusetts and the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The 54th Massachusetts was active from March 13, 1863 to August 4, 1865. There were one thousand and one hundred men in the union army. Many of the men that volunteered to fight for the union army came from other states too. Some examples are New York, Indiana and Ohio. Some of the men even came from Canada. However, only one quarter of the volunteers came from slave states and the Caribbean. Sons and their fathers sometimes registered together. Some of the young boys were as young as sixteen years of age. The two commanders were Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and Colonel Edward Needles Hallowell. Shaw’s parents were wealthy and prominent abolitionist activists. Robert Gould Shaw had dropped out of Harvard to join the Union Army and had been injured in battle at Antietam. He was injured at a young age of 25 years old. Like many officers of regiments of African-American troops, both Shaw and Hallowell were promoted several grades. In the beginning, it was showing how the union army was recruiting freed slaves for the first time. It was difficult and took time for the white officers to get used to because they were the ones in charge of them and they prepared them for the war. Although the 54th left Boston hoping to fight for the Union on May 28, 1863, it started off performing only manual labor. They were treated a lot differently from the white, however. The blacks did not get all the privileges that the white soldiers had. They were paid less money than the white Union Army soldiers were paid and the African Americans received fewer supplies. It’s sad because they were made fun of sometimes and teased and they definitely were not treated as equal among the white union soldier ranks. I think they were treated this way because not any slaves were free at that time and the white and blacks did not get along very well. Also, the white still thought that they