Reel Civil War

by Bruce Chadwick

"More movies have been produced about the Civil War than about any other aspect of American history. From 1903 (Uncle Tom's Cabin) to the present, film studios have released more than eight hundred silent and sound pictures about the nation's most cataclysmic event. In this study, Bruce Chadwick first shows us how historians, journalists, playwrights, poets and novelists of the late nineteenth century - partly as an effort to reconcile former antagonists - rewrote the war's history to create enduring legends, most of which had no basis in reality. Early silent films followed their example, presenting egregiously distorted - and anti-black - stories about the war, which viewers accepted as truth.". "Dr. Chadwick gives us a recounting of those films' plots and themes, including D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and goes on to describe dozens of movies from the twenties and thirties, among them the classic Gone With the Wind. In the forties and fifties many westerns were partly or chief