John Rawlins: Where about you from?
Trip: I'm from around Tennessee. I ran away when I was 12 years old and I ain't never looked back.
Sharts: What ya doin' since then?
Trip: I've been running for President. I ain't winning though.

Rawlins: He's just a boy.
Trip: He a weak white boy, and beatin' on a nigger make him feel strong.

Trip: I ain't fightin' this war for you, sir.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: I see.
Trip: I mean, what's the point? Ain't nobody gonna win. It's just gonna go on and on.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: Can't go on forever.
Trip: Yeah, but ain't nobody gonna win, sir.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: Somebody's gonna win.
Trip: Who? I mean, you get to go on back to Boston, big house and all that. What about us? What do we get?
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: Well, you won't get anything if we lose.

Colonel Robert G. Shaw: So what do you want to do?
Trip: Don't know, sir.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: It stinks, I suppose.
Trip: Yeah, It stinks bad. And we all covered up in it too. Ain't nobody clean. Be nice to get clean, though.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: How do we do that?
Trip: We anty up and kick in, sir. But I still don't want to carry your flag.

Trip: You ain't nothin' but the white man's dog!
[Rawlins slaps him.]
Rawlins: And who are you? So full of hate that you have to fight everybody, because you've been whipped and chased by hounds. Well that might not be living, but it sure as hell ain't dying. And dying's been what these white boys have been doing for going on three years now, dying by the thousands, dying for you, fool.

Jupiter Sharts: [praying aloud] Tommorrow we goes into battle, so Lordy, let me fight with the rifle in one hand, and the Good Book in the other. So that if I may die at the muzzle of the rifle... die on water, or on land, I may know that you blessed Jesus almighty are with me... and I have no fear.

Trip: See the way I figure... this war would be over a whole lot sooner.. if you boys just turned on around and headed back down that way and let us up there where the real fighting is.
Heckled Union Soldier: There is men dying up that road.
Trip: And there wouldn't be nothing but rebs if they'd let the fifty-fourth in it.

[Soldiers from the 54th Massachusetts marching through Union soldiers, they will soon attack Fort Wagner]
Union Soldier: Give 'em Hell, 54!
All: Give 'em Hell, 54!