Joseph Glarthaar’s Forged in Battle is not the first excel- lent study of Black soldiers and their White officers in the Civil War, but it uses more soldiers’ letters and diaries— including rare material from Black soldiers—and concen- (5) rates more intensely on Black-White relations in Black regiments than do any of its predecessors. Glathaar’s title expresses his thesis: loyalty, friendship, and respect among White officers and Black soldiers were fostered by the mutual dangers they faced in combat. (10 ) Glarthaar accurately describes the government’s discrim- inatory treatment of Black soldiers in pay, promotion, medi cal care, and job assignments, appropriately emphasizing the campaign by Black soldiers and their officers to get the opportunity to fight. That chance remained limited through (15) out the war by army policies that kept most Black units serving in rear-echelon assignments and working in labor battalions. Thus, while their combat death rate was only one-third that of White units, their mortality rate from disease, a major killer in his war, was twice as great. (20) Despite these obstacles, the courage and effectiveness of several Black units in combat won increasing respect from initially skeptical or hostile White soldiers. As one White officer put it, “they have fought their way into the respect of all the army.” (25) In trying to demonstrate the magnitude of this attitudi- nal change, however, Glarthaar seems to exaggerate the prewar racism of the White men who became officers in Black regiments. “Prior to the war,” he writes of these men, “virtually all of them held powerful racial prejudices.” (30) While perhaps true of those officers who joined Black units for promotion or other self-serving motives, this state- ment misrepresents the attitudes of the many abolitionists who became officers in Black regiments. Having spent years fighting against the race prejudice endemic in Ameri- (35) can society; they participated eagerly in this military experiment, which they hoped would help African Americans achieve freedom and postwar civil equality. By current standards of racial egalitarianism, these men’s paternalism toward African Americans was racist. But to call their (40) feelings “powerful racial prejudices” is to indulge in generational chauvinism—to judge past eras by present standards. 173. Which of the following best describes the kind of error attributed to Glarthaar in lines 25-28? (A) Insisting on an unwarranted distinction between two groups of individuals in order to render an argument concerning them internally consistent (B) Supporting an argument in favor of a given interpretation of a situation with evidence that is not particularly relevant to the situation (C) Presenting a distorted view of the motives of certain individuals in order to provide grounds for a negative evaluation of their actions (D) Describing the conditions prevailing before a given event in such a way that the contrast with those prevailing after the event appears more striking than it actually is (E) Asserting that a given event is caused by another event merely because the other event occurred before the given event occurred 174. Which of the following actions can best be described as indulging in “generational chauvinism” (lines 40-41) as that practice is defined in the passage? (A) Condemning a present-day monarch merely because many monarchs have been tyrannical in the past. (B) Clinging to the formal standards of politeness common in one’s youth to such a degree that any relaxation of those standards is intolerable (C) Questioning the accuracy of a report written by an employee merely because of the employee’s gender. (D) Deriding the superstitions accepted as “science” in past eras without acknowledging the prevalence of irrational beliefs today. (E) Labeling a nineteenth-century politician as “corrupt” for engaging in once-acceptable practices considered intolerable today.
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