Returned home to recover from wounds, he is recruited to lead a newly formed black regiment and takes the job even though his own enlightened abolitionist opinions still leave room for doubts about the capability of black troops.

'Glory' tells the story of the 54th Regiment largely through the eyes of Shaw ( Matthew Broderick), who in an early scene in the film is seen horrified and disoriented by the violence of the battlefield. But its members remained disciplined soldiers to the end, and their performance on that day - Jencouraged the North to recruit other blacks to its ranks, 180,000 in all, and may have been decisive in turning the tide of the war.

The attack was almost suicidal, particularly given the battlefield strategies of the day, which involved disciplining troops to keep on marching into withering fire. Although it was widely believed at the time that blacks would not make good soldiers and would not submit to discipline under fire, the 54th figured in one of the bloodiest actions of the war, an uphill attack across muddy terrain against a Confederate fort in Charleston, S.C. It tells the story of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, made up of black soldiers - some Northern freemen, some escaped slaves - and led by whites, including Robert Gould Shaw, the son of Boston abolitionists. The inspiration for 'Glory' came to Jarre as he stood looking at the monument. Although the American Civil War is often referred to as the war to free the slaves, it had never occurred to Jarre - or, apparently, to very many others - that blacks themselves fought in the war. The story goes that the author of 'Glory,' Kevin Jarre, was walking across Boston Common one day when he noticed something about a Civil War memorial that he had never noticed before.

The Officer's Bride by Lara Daniels