Glory (1989 film)

Glory is a 1989 American war film directed by Edward Zwick and starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes and Morgan Freeman. The screenplay was written by Kevin Jarre, based on the personal letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the novel One Gallant Rush by Peter Burchard reissued in 1990 after the movie, and Lay This Laurel 1973, Lincoln Kirsteins compilation of photos of the monument to the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on Boston Common.

During the American Civil War, Captain Robert Shaw is injured in the Battle of Antietam and sent home to Boston on medical leave. He visits his family there, where he meets the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a former slave. Shaw is offered a promotion to the rank of Colonel to command one of the first allblack regiments in the Union Army, the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He accepts and asks his childhood friend, 2nd Lieutenant Cabot Forbes, to serve as his second in command, with the rank of major. Their first volunteer is another friend, Thomas Searles, a bookish free African American. Other recruits soon follow, including gravedigger John Rawlins, timid freeman Jupiter Sharts and Silas Trip, an escaped slave who does not trust Shaw. Trip instantly clashes with Searles, and Rawlins must keep the peace.The men learn that the Confederacy has issued an order that all black soldiers found in Union uniform will be summarily executed, as will their white officers, and are offered a chance to take an honorable discharge, but none of them do. The black soldiers undergo a severe training regimen under Irish SergeantMajor Mulcahy. When Shaw confronts Mulcahy about his methods he comes to realize that Mulcahy is in fact training them fairly and is trying to prepare the men for the extreme challenges that they will face. ........

Source: Wikipedia