discipline
Peter Knupfer (PKNUPFER@KSUVM.BITNET)
Tue, 5 Oct 1993 22:55:36 ECT
Kelly Richter's citation from Bell Wiley is interesting and provocative --
I'd like to follow it up, not for accuracy's sake but to determine if and
when officers were themselves disciplined for flogging black troops. I found
no instances of such treatment in the standard or recent works on USCT, in-
cluding Joe Glatthaar's book. Although Joe went through the provost marshal's
records pretty carefully, and although at one point he expressed some
skepticism to me about the incident in -Glory-, all this demonstrates is that
flogging was not SOP. Connections might be drawn to the Navy, which underwent
flogging reforms before the war and which incorporated blacks more freely and
without the era's obsession for noting race in its records. What in intrigues
me is that the directors and writers thought it an effective technique for
the scene and the message they wanted to convey, when they had at their
disposal a grisly array of punishments that we know were routinely imposed
in the USCT. I too have been preparing my students for "Gettysburg," hoping
they will approach it as grand entertainment and as an extended essay on
on the war's meaning. I have done the same with Ken Burns's documentary --
asking them to explain if they can the decisions to both cast certain voices
and to emphasize the scale and sweep of the conflict. The responses have been
interesting.