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proceed with civil rights legislation and Hollywood felt that it could return to the CivilWar, and to the Civil War it had left in the mid-1950s. Ten years of harassment,intimidation and murder had made America ready to accept the African Americans intofull citizenship and also completed the change of Hollywood's representation of thesouthern character and the myth of the Lost Cause.Hollywood has not been just a reflector of popular consciousness but has been ready toengage in the debate. Whilst the causes of the Civil War were generally overlooked, filmsafter 1945 did deal with the contemporary reality of race, race relations and nationalidentity when the climate of opinion seemed favourable. Hollywood began to show adifferent vision of the Civil War by adapting novels to reflect a more pro-civil rights view. 2After Brown African American roles become stronger, 3 but it was in the last cycle of filmsthat saw the greatest increase in positive roles. 4 Gradually the African American wasshown as not only having equal worth to that of a white American 5 but also that heconsidered himself to be an American 6 and had signed up to American values and theAmerican dream. 7 African Americans were at last seen fighting for their freedom againstConfederates, 8 and Confederates had African American wives. 9The middle 1970s marked another discontinuity in Hollywood's Civil War. The need forharmony and unity after the divisiveness of the 1960s did not provide an environment forthe characteristic disunity and bitterness of the Civil War. In twenty-five years Hollywoodproduced only eleven Civil War films - three of which appeared in 1993. The mostsignificant film was Glory, which concentrated on African Americans fighting for theirfreedom in the Civil War. It has not been repeated. Instead Hollywood returned to morefamiliar territory with films like Gettysburg (1993), 10 depicting the honourable, heroicfight between North and South; Sommersby (1993) - a remake of The Return of MartinGuerre in a southern setting with post-Civil War harmonious race relations; and Pharoah'sArmy (1995), a North/South romance. Ride with the Devil (1999) was different. It tried togive a neutral view of the guerrilla warfare between the Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers nin the mid-west - although it did so from the (southern) Bushwhacker's perspective -stressing the 'moral ambiguities' of war and the complexities of relationships. 12147