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The Civil War, to put it mildly, is the defining moment in American history, which makes it a complex and overwhelming topic to tackle in a blog about movies. You can experience it in relatively straightforward movies such as Gettysburg, Gone With the Wind, and Cold Mountain; or you can take the lighthearted approach and see the Confederate pratfalls of Buster Keaton's The General. Civil War movies are vast because they don't just recount events, they use the war as a thematic background, so you're going to get a lot of variety.
Quick rundown, then: Lincoln is elected; southern states secede in 1860-61 fearing he'll roll over their rights as states to own people like cattle; the Confederate States of America destroy Fort Sumter, bombastically declaring war; bloody battles fought back and forth until the CSA surrenders in 1865. If you want more details, you'll have to read books (it's really interesting! I promise) or try and glean something from my past posts, but in the meantime, just know this: before the war, it was "the United States are..."; after, "the United States is..." Now the relationship between the states and the federal government is clear(er). Black people are STILL not fully considered people though, even in the northern states; many Union soldiers didn't think they were fighting to free 'the coloreds' until well into the war.
But hey, a lot of progress is made for the black population during the war, even if some of it is just gaining the ability to fight in a war. In March 1863, three months after the Emancipation Proclamation came into effect, the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was formed by the governor of the state. The regiment was one of the first African American units in the Union Army, and it saw extensive action in the American Civil War. Commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (who was white, as Secretary of War Edward Stanton did not trust black people to lead their own units), they fought all over the country, ending their time at the Battle of Boykin's Mill in April 1865, one of the last battles in the war.
The 1989 film Glory tells the bittersweet tale of the 54th, with the oddly cast Matthew Broderick playing the role of Shaw. It's bittersweet because, and here's a spoiler even though it's a 24 year-old movie about a real historical event (I didn't know the outcome either), almost half of the 54th, including Shaw, were killed in a siege on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 23, 1863. The 'sweet' of this event was that after the valour was recognized, it increased enlistment and use of African-American troops, something President Lincoln recognized as helping end the conflict.
This all was happening, appropriately enough, during the great New York draft/race riots as documented in the last half hour of Gangs of New York, and this dichotomy highlights the hardships of living as a black person anywhere in the United States, even in the north.
Glory is about as good a movie about the Civil War as one could get, and it's consistently praised for it's accuracy and the lack of forced stirring moments (they exist, but they're played rather well). What's unfortunate is that this is yet another film about the black experience in America that is told from the perspective of a white man. I know Shaw is an important part of the 54th's history, but there are other perspectives that could have been taken- either Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman, for example, could have been the focus, as both are important and much more interesting characters. Washington even won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; maybe it could have been upgraded to Best Actor.
Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil has a much different focus than that of Glory, in that the protagonists are Confederates (or the Missouri equivalents, known as Bushwackers) and they are fighting the anti-slavery, pro-Union Kansas Jayhawkers (who are coming over the border to fight, as Missouri is a slave state). So these are people not normally associated with 'good guys'. This of course makes it a much more complex movie, and it doesn't always work, but Ang Lee's style definitely makes the movie worthwhile.
In Ride with the Devil, Tobey Maguire joins a group of Bushwackers as they seek vengeance on raiding Jayhawkers; one of the gang just so happens to be a black man named Holt (played by Jeffrey Wright) who fights loyally alongside his former owner. Maguire's relationship with Holt is but one of the many complex relationships in the movie (the relationship with Jewel, for instance, takes up much of the latter half of the movie), and thus Ride overextends itself into boredom, but it's still a lovely film.
But Holt's motives in the movie are complicated, and he feels loyal to the Bushwackers (and Quantrill's Raiders, the infamous Confederate guerilla group with whom he and MacGuire end up joining) despite their motives being opposite to his well-being. You can see the pain in his eyes briefly when the Raiders are stacking up the bodies of black men after their massacre at Lawrence, Kansas. So, why'd he stay?
It's an excuse you here from Southern apologists all the time: black men fought to protect the South's right to secede, so the Civil War wasn't about slavery! It's kind of true, at least the first part- a couple thousand slaves did indeed fight for the Confederate Army, as they were allowed to fight as part of a last ditch effort to win the war in 1865.
The Confederates forced them, of course, because these weren't free men fighting for what they saw was right; Holt's motivations in Ride aren't political, but myopically personal. His former owner, George Clyde, goes out on a limb to defend Holt, saying he's one of the few men he'd trust with his life. I doubt Clyde would feel the same way about any other black man he'd come across, especially not if these black men fought for the Union. The 54th, like all black regiments, were under threat of execution if captured; Jefferson Davis proclaimed in December of 1862 that any captured black soldiers or their white officers were to be sentenced to death.
By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease. 16 were awarded the Medal of Honor. But let's not forget the slaves who were forced to fight against their best interests- unlike their white fellow soldiers, they had little choice or stake in the matter.
NEXT TIME: Looking at Walker, a BIZARRE and oft-forgotten chapter of American colonialism, and then we catch up with an ex-Quantrill Raider and see what he's up to (hint: he's a famous bank robber!).
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| A recruitment broadside for black men in the north. Unfortunately, those who signed up were paid less than their white counterparts ($10 a month compared to $16 a month), and had to buy their own uniforms (as opposed to white soldiers, who were given a $3.50 clothing allowance). |
Sources:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/54th_Massachusetts_Volunteer_Infantry
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/confederacy-approves-black-soldiers
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