Books: Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America

For Juneteenth this year, I read Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America by Douglas Egerton.  The book is an epic and exhaustive look at the men of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry and 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, some of the Union's first African-American regiments, whose service paved the way for thousands of black soldiers in the fight to end slavery.

Most probably know about the 54th Massachusetts from the classic 1989 film Glory, but nearly all the black men in that movie (including main characters played by Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman) were composites or totally fictional.  Thunder at the Gates explores the real history using hundreds of primary sources, and it's more fascinating than anything a screenwriter could put together. You'll meet the multilingual world traveler Nicholas Said, the sons of famous freedman and author Frederick Douglass, and many more interesting men, in campaigns that stretch far beyond the Battle of Fort Wagner that served as the climax to the film.

Egerton does a great job of portraying the complex racial and political attitudes of the time - not only the internal divisions of the Union (which of course included border states where slavery was still legal) but among the abolitionists themselves (the desire to end slavery did not necessarily entail an egalitarian view of race relations). It's a little much for a casual reader (the constant asides and quotes make for a meandering narrative), but it's a comprehensive account of a pivotal moment in American history.