Most accurate Civil War film

Wicked Spring was great, uniform/equipage was good, battle scenes good, but the story line was a bit hard to believe.

AUG351 is correct about the "Crater" battle scene in Cold Mountain, though I don't know of the Yanks lying down before the explosion, and throwing bayonet fixed Enfields like spears into the bunched up Yanks.

Glory just about tops them all, take away the scenes of issuing Enfields with serial numbers, trouble with Quartermaster folk, and the flogging of Denzel Washington.

Kevin Dally

Agree with the flogging and the serial numbers on the rifles. However other black regiments(without the personal attention of Gov. Andrew) experienced problems with the quartermaster department getting proper and sufficient equipment.

Funny thing about Glory is that nearly all the racism inflicted on the regiment is done by the Union side, the script even including incidents like the flogging which didn't happen. The Confederates are practically faceless. Hard fighting and tough opponents of course, but that's it. An order by Davis condemning POWs to slavery and their officers to hang is read out, but we never see such actions carried out.
 
Funny thing about Glory is that nearly all the racism inflicted on the regiment is done by the Union side, the script even including incidents like the flogging which didn't happen. The Confederates are practically faceless. Hard fighting and tough opponents of course, but that's it. An order by Davis condemning POWs to slavery and their officers to hang is read out, but we never see such actions carried out.

Hm. Never thought of it that way, but you're right. Perhaps they didn't want to further confuse the story or something? There was certainly enough racism to contend with on the Northern side already.

That's one of the things I appreciate about Glory, by the way. It's always been far too simplistic (and ahistorical) to represent the Union troops as noble antislavery crusaders. To show crooked quartermasters, racial tension in the ranks, ethical arguments at the officer levels, and differences among the troops with varying backgrounds all makes it seem much more real and is almost certainly close to the truth (or at least as close as Hollywood can get).
 
There were actually Native American of the Catawba tribe fighting in and around the crater with some of the North and South Carolina regiments that were sitting ontop of the mine when it exploded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catawba_people
The Catawba were one of the Native American nations most commited to the Confederacy because they live right in North and South Carolina and they got good pay of 50$ for inlistment. Iam sure when the crater was filled full of Yanks the Confederates just threw whatever they could get their hands on, muskets, rocks, cannon balls, everything to stop them from sweeping up and out.

Has anyone here heard of To Appomattox? http://www.toappomattox.com/
Its going to be an HBO mini series focusing on some of the generals and battles of the war, not just late in the war like Overland Campaign or Petersburg but from what it looks like its going to fallow the lives of Lee and Grant from the Mexican War throughout the Civil War. Iam looking forward to it, hoping it will turn out to be an unbiased and accurate depiction of the war, battles, and generals, but we'll have to wait till probably late next year.


Thanks for mentioning the Catawbas! I have at least four close ancestors were in the 12th SC infantry, Indian Home Guards and one with the Palmetto Sharpshooters. They went all the way to Appomattox.

For movie accuracy, I was going to nominate "Lincoln" but somebody beat me to it!
 
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Agreed aside from the spear, and other side stuff I believe the Crater showed the war truly bloody very well, but the rest of the film was really just ehhh.
I watched the opening battle scene of Cold Mountain because my ancestor participated in the initial charge into the Crater. It was quite exciting and seemed about as realistic as one can expect from a movie. As for the rest of the movie I only watched about 10 minutes and could not get into it. Too much like a soap opera.
 
There was certainly enough racism to contend with on the Northern side already.

That was completely overplayed in the film. Yeah, there was "racism" (the word didn't exist then), but if the Union army was so "racist", blacks would not have even been recruited to begin with, let alone awarded 25 Congressional Medals of Honor, and all of them were for legitimate reasons. Professor Gary Gallagher addresses the over-stated accustations of "racism" against the Federal army in the book "The Union War" and reached much different conclusions than what non-historian Hollywood screenwriters would have you believe. Hollywood laces everything they do with Politically Correct mumbo-jumbo, blowing things out of proportion and weighing them against modern sensibilities as if the people of historic times were universally doltish and hateful.

The most accurate Civil War movie hasn't been made yet.
 
There was more racism in the Western Union armies, especially Sherman's, than in the East. I'm not sure, but didn't Sherman's troops go on a rampage when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, or was that some other incident?
 
If I could pick an individual scene, the Antietam action in the first few minutes of "Glory" was downright scary with the chaos and battle action it displayed.

I forgot about that scene, thanks for posting. One mistake though about that scene is that the 2nd Massachusetts (the regiment Robert Gould Shaw was in before he became colonel of the 54th MA) never attacked the sunken road at Antietam. They fought around the cornfield earlier in the day in Brig. Gen. George H. Gordon's Brigade. You can see their position on this map. http://antietam.aotw.org/maps.php?map_number=3
 
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That was completely overplayed in the film. Yeah, there was "racism" (the word didn't exist then), but if the Union army was so "racist" blacks would not have even recruited to begin with, let alone awarding 25 Congressional Medals of Honor to them, and all of them were legitimate and not awarded for murky reasons. Professor Gary Gallagher addresses the over-stated accustations of "racism" gainst the Federal army in the book "The Union War" and reached much different conclusions than what non-historian Hollywood screenwriters would have you believe. Typical Hollywood. They cant' do a film on a historic subject without making a modern PC statement out of it.

The most accurate Civil War movie hasn't been made yet (and it sure aint' Lincoln).
I suggest anyone who doubts the Racist (yes modern term) nature of the views of white men of the time. Actually sit down and read diarys and letters as apposed to what a historian thinks. A great read for a view of the AOP. Is On Campaign with the AOP. Ot is the journal of a Northern officer. He and many of his compatriots had "servants " throughout. Just finished reading it and was really shocked by some of it. As to movies. I like both Gettysburg and Gods and Generals. But Ride with the Devil and the Colt are high up there for accuracy. Glory was good too.
 
There was more racism in the Western Union armies, especially Sherman's, than in the East. I'm not sure, but didn't Sherman's troops go on a rampage when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, or was that some other incident?
For thoughts on the Emancipation Proclamation from a Union soldier in the Eastern Union Armies please read the letter written by my g-g grandfather, Pvt. William B. Phillips, for his explanation on why he is fighting. You might find it interesting and surprising. http://wbp2ndpaha.wordpress.com/march-1863/
 
as I-95 and the Talmadge bridge were not open , how long did it take the soldiers in Glory to "run down to Darian Ga this morning " from South Carolina ?
 
That was completely overplayed in the film. Yeah, there was "racism" (the word didn't exist then), but if the Union army was so "racist", blacks would not have even been recruited to begin with, let alone awarded 25 Congressional Medals of Honor, and all of them were for legitimate reasons.

Er... the strong performance of the USCT is not in question here; merely the attitude of others towards them and others. I agree that "racism" was not thought of as a particular mind-set, good, bad, or otherwise; the 'supremacy' of European peoples was simply never even questioned by most, as being self-evident. As is brought sharply into focus in the movie Lincoln, the complete equality of the races was something far beyond the mere 'equality before the law' that the 13th Amendment sought to establish; we struggle with it to this day.

RE the opening Antietam sequence, one of the most frightening (to me) scenes in the whole picture is where the officer (in this case, Shaw) simply draws his sword, points it toward the enemy line, and starts walking towards it, his rifle-armed troops marching behind him. That takes some major-league guts, there.
 
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