This is a deleted scene from the movie, “Gods and Generals”.
Civil War Memory
Reflections of a High School History Teacher & Civil War Historian
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The Future of the Confederate Flag
My recent post on the unveiling of another large Confederate flag in Tennessee generated a number of comments. It’s an emotional issue on all sides and it is unlikely that the interested parties will ever fully agree on whether it should be displayed in public as well as its meaning. But that’s the way it
75 Comments — 13812 Views — June 11, 2009
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Is the Richard Kirkland Story True?
The following guest post by Michael Schaffner examines the wartime evidence for the Kirkland story. It is a thoroughly researched essay and is well worth your time. I should point out that Mr. Schaffner did not set out to write a piece debunking this particular story. Like many of us he was curious about the
38 Comments — 7816 Views — December 22, 2009
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Nat Turner Lived 40 Miles From the Crater
I‘ve been thinking quite a bit about the images of slave rebellions and miscegenation that shaped the world view of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. In the case of Nat Turner’s Rebellion newspapers throughout Virginia and beyond offered extensive coverage and attempted to offer an explanation that would assuage the concerns of what white
17 Comments — 7363 Views — June 26, 2009
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Family Fun With Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth
[Hat-Tip to Steve West] How would you like to attend a reenactment of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. On March 7 the Sovereign Majestic Theater in Pottsville, Pennsylvania will be transformed into Ford’s Theater. Booth will be played by Charles Sacavage, a retired Pottsville Area School District history teacher who now teaches history part-time at Alvernia
18 Comments — 6840 Views — February 25, 2009
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Patrick Cleburne and Black Confederates Take Hollywood
[Hat-Tip to Lee White] Back in 2008 I commented on a graphic novel that tells the story of Patrick Cleburne’s plan to arm slaves in exchange for their freedom. I expressed a number of concerns in that post and I appreciate the author of the novel for offering his own perspective. Now it looks like that
75 Comments — 5663 Views — February 5, 2010
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I find it almost impossible to believe that officials at Richmond’s Museum of the Confederacy are considering a move to Lexington in the Shenandoah Valley. Most of you are no doubt familiar with the MOC’s financial problems and the drop in the number of visitors owing to the expansion of the VCU Hospital. Apart from
6 Comments — 84 Views — January 25, 2007
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Virginia Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission Endorses Battlefield Preservation Initiative
I was unable to attend last week’s meeting of the Virginia Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission so I am reading this for the first time. At its meeting last week, the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the Civil War Preservation Trust’s (CWPT) Virginia Sesquicentennial Battlefield Initiative. Initiative encourages state
0 Comments — 55 Views — December 6, 2007
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Lincoln Prizes Announced
This year’s Lincoln Prize goes to James Oakes, author of The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, and Elizabeth Brown Pryor, who wrote Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. Each will receive $20,000. Congratulations to both. I have not yet read Oakes’s book, but
1 Comments — 106 Views — February 12, 2008
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Alexander County School Board: 1 – SCV: 0
From the Charlotte ObserverThe Alexander County Board of Education on Tuesday rejected the appeal of a Confederate history group to place Confederate Veteran magazine in the county high school and middle schools. The board voted 6-1 to uphold Superintendent Jack Hoke’s rejection of the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ request. The group had asked to provide
0 Comments — 103 Views — December 29, 2005
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Ron Maxwell to Pay Back Loan
Turns out that director Ron Maxwell took out a loan of $300,000 from Washington County, Maryland to complete the final chapter in the Shaara trilogy. Well, with the failure of the movie Gods and Generals it looks like those plans are in serious jeopardy and now the county wants its money back.
0 Comments — 53 Views — January 13, 2006
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I threw up just a little bit.
My Civil War Memory class spent three days viewing and analyzing specific scenes from “Birth of a Nation”. I hope to give them a sense of change over time as well as an understanding of the continued popularity of Lost Cause themes.
The act of emancipating one's slave was much more complicated than merely giving him/her “freedom papers,” whatever those might be. The laws varied from state to state, but they always involved a court process, and in many, if not most, southern states also had other stringent conditions, put into place during the decades prior to the war to prevent emancipations. How would a rebel soldier, away from home and in wartime conditions, have gone through the necessary legal process? A slave owner might well have said to his/her slaves as the Union army approached, “you're free to go,” with bitterness or perhaps hopes of enticing the slaves to stay and work, but such statements carried no legal weight and had the Confederacy ultimately won would not have been viewed as legitimate.
You are absolutely right. In fact, some states made illegal to free slaves at various points or mandated that the freed slave must leave the state.
The bigger problem with the scene is (along with much of the rest of the film) that it fails to move beyond the level of cliche. The viewer is left with little understanding as to why these black men are with the army and how they conceptualize the war. The individual in this scene is confused about what he will do next now that his former master is dead. All he knows to do is to escort the body home and then he will take stock as opposed to the tens of thousands who are fleeing to the Union army or free territory. I would love to know why this scene was deleted.
I think the filmmaker here has exploited the theater/film/literature tradition of suspension of disbelief, where I'm willing to set aside judgement in favor of being entertained. I'll do that for a James Bond movie, but not so much for a so-called historical film. Maybe that's why Maxwell deleted this scene – he might have known that he was stretching our suspension of disbelief beyond its limits.
I would like to believe that, but I suspect that it was simply deleted owing to the length of the movie. Cutting this particular scene still left us with a 4-hour plus movie of Civil War silliness.
I'll get you some Tums. Come on Larry it is a cut piece of film that someone got off the Directors cutting room floor. Relax 95% of the general population will never see it and very few have seen the movie.
It's a cut piece of film that reflects Maxwell's oversimplified and distorted view of the Civil War. It's modern-day Lost Cause garbage that confuses the place of black southerners in Confederate ranks.
That is the reason I have not wasted my time or money to watch it yet. It got panned all over. I might rent it during Christmas break to see if you and Larry are just over reacting about the whole thing.
Best of luck to you. I failed to get through it even after paying to see it in the theater.
It can't be worse than Birth of a Nation which is a Klan Propaganda piece.
I actually think that Birth of a Nation is 10x more sophisticated and interesting compared with Gods and Generals.
Oh I wish it had been in the movie–it tips the director's hand and shows the Lost Cause interpretation that is at the heart of the film.
I would actually agree that Birth of the Nation is a better film. The most disturbing thing about Birth of a Nation is that is both (exactly as Msimons says) a Klan propaganda piece and simultaneously a landmark breakthrough in American film making. You want to ignore it but you cannot.