Great entertainment, poor history

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2002)

Glory is one of the most touching and brilliantly acted war films ever made. The realism and attention to battlefield detail are exceptional. It's also substantially propaganda. The Civil War's roots lie not in abolitionist sentiment but in unfair taxation, corruption and power. It was mainly a struggle between those who supported the very limited Federal government sought by the Founders (the Democratic Party and The South) and those who desired a stronger central government able to enrich themselves, the party in power and their supporters through massive political patronage (the Whig and later the Republican Party, headed by Abraham Lincoln).

For economic reasons at that time, racism in The North was even more virulent than in The South and the vocal minority of abolitionists were merely tools of Lincoln in achieving his own goals. Almost everywhere else in the 19th century slavery was ended by peaceful compensated emancipation, but Lincoln rejected this route and dismissed or disciplined several of his Generals who attempted to emancipate slaves in newly captured territory. Many slaves who ended up in the hands of the Federal army were not set free but were put to work doing the most unpleasant tasks in and around army encampments. Others were sent back to their owners. Congress passed several "confiscation acts" in the early years of the war that allowed Federal troops to confiscate the slaves (and other property) in conquered rebel territory.
I suspect that Lincoln was not playing with a full deck. In effect he sought to destroy the Constitution in order to save the Union. Sort of like brutally beating your spouse in order to save your marriage. He greatly miscalculated the ability and resolve of The South on the battlefield against the The North just as The South misjudged just how far Lincoln was willing to go to in order to destroy states rights and the widely held assumption that states could peacefully secede from the Union.

Shelby Foote, consultant for Glory and author of The Civil War, stated, "Lincoln had maneuvered [the Confederates] into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war." Interestingly, no one was injured at Fort Sumter even though the bombardment lasted 36 hours. Its only due to the foolish chivalry of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, in not following up their rout of the Union Army at the war's first big battle of Bull Run (called First Manassas in The South) just outside Washington, the war might have ended and 500,000 lives saved.
For a compete treatment of an alternative view to The Civil War, see The Real Lincoln, by Thomas DiLorenzo.