<
You men gather around.
I've been talking with Private Bucklin.
He's told me about your problem.
There's nothing I can do today.
We're moving out in a few minutes.
We'll be moving all day.
I've been ordered
to take you men with me.
I'm told that...
if you don't come, I can shoot you.
Well, you know I won't do that.
Maybe somebody else will, but I won't.
So, that's that.
Here's the situation.
The whole reb army is up that road
a ways waiting for us.
This is no time for an argument.
I tell you, we could surely use you fellows.
We're now well below half strength.
Whether you fight or not, that's up to you.
Whether you come along is...
Well, you're coming.
You know who we are, why we're here.
If you fight alongside us,
there's a few things you must know.
This regiment was formed
last summer in Maine.
There were of us then.
There are less than of us now.
All of us volunteered to fight
for the Union, just as you did.
Some came mainly because
we were bored at home.
Thought this looked like it might be fun.
Some came because
we were ashamed not to.
Many of us came
because it was the right thing to do.
And all of us have seen men die.
This is a different kind of army.
If you look back through history,
you'll see men fighting for pay...
for women, for some other kind of loot.
They fight for land, power.
Because a king leads them,
or just because they like killing.
We are here for something new.
This has not happened much
in the history of the world.
We are an army out to set other men free.
America should be free ground.
All of it.
Not divided by a line
between slave state and free.
All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean.
No man has to bow.
No man born to royalty.
Here we judge you by what you do,
not by who your father was.
Here you can be something.
Here is the place to build a home.
But it's not the land.
There's always more land.
It's the idea that we all have value.
You and me.
What we're fighting for, in the end...
we're fighting for each other.