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Chapter 2A WAR REMEMBERED, A WAR REUSEDThe past is never dead. It's not even past. 'Hollywood did not suddenly discover the Civil War - it was already firmly established inAmerican culture and memory. It 'still exists,' says David Goldfield, 'an event withouttemporal boundaries, an interminable struggle that has generated perhaps as manycasualties since its alleged end in 1865 as during the four preceding years.' 2 Its deeds andlegacy have burned into popular consciousness, spawning great myths and inspiring arange of popular culture from memoirs to plays, re-enactments to memorabilia, monumentsto novels, genealogy to poetry, painting and music. Hollywood took up the Civil War in itsearliest days and more films have been made about it than on any other historical event.The continuing influence of the Civil WarOf the three significant and formative events in the history of the United States - thelanding of the Pilgrim Fathers (1620), the Declaration of Independence and theRevolutionary war (1776-83) and the Civil War (1861-65) - it is the latter that still loomsacross the American landscape. Thomas Pressly suggested an answer when he wrote thatthe Civil War 'seemed to involve questions which go to the very heart of national life: therelationship between the national government and the states....the question of 'majorityrule' in a constitutional democracy....the role of the Negro in American life: the questionof what economic policies the national government should adopt.' 3 These are great issues,but civil wars have another side, they evoke great emotions and great loyalties, especiallyin the defeated side, which echo down the generations.It is not only white Americans who look back to the Civil War and the issues that it raised- of equality, national identity and race. African Americans also look to it to regain andreaffirm their place in American history. In September 1996 African American re-enactorsmarched along the same victory parade route in Washington D. C. as only white soldiers ofthe Grand Army of the Republic had done in May 1865. Two years later the Spirit ofFreedom, designed by an African-American sculptor, was unveiled in the centre of a Wall24
of Honor dedicated to, and listing, all the members of the United States Colored Troops -including their white officers. 4Emotion inevitably produces distortion and the South, desperate to come to terms with theconsequences of a devastating defeat, occupation and emancipation, produced the myth ofthe Lost Cause. The South, so the myth established, had fought to preserve states' rights,not to preserve slavery; it had fought for what it believed to be right; its soldiers had foughtbravely and honourably and were only finally overwhelmed by vastly superior forces; theNorth had provoked, and then invaded, the South and destroyed its superior civilisation;the slaves, with their limited abilities, had been generally happy and contented, well lookedafter and received moral education and care in the most favourable paternalisticenvironment; and Reconstruction was a courageous battle against the despoilers ofSouthern values - the Yankees and the African Americans. 5 Around this myth the Southcame together - it had not been united before, not even during the war - and in 1877, afterregaining political power in the eleven secession states, the white political aristocracy wasleft to nurture its traditions, establish new rites and to take charge of the memory of theCivil War - or the 'War Between the States' as the South renamed it in 1898.6By 1900 the memory of the Civil War for most white Americans had coalesced into one ofreconciliation and white supremacy. North and South had gradually come together asveterans from both sides found common ground in reflecting on their experiences of abloody war of American against American. This reconciliation between the white Northand the white South was symbolised in the Spanish-American War of 1898, as the Southenthusiastically embraced the chance to demonstrate its prowess in war and loyalty to thenation, and was cemented at the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913.The emancipationist vision held by the African Americans was pushed into the backgroundof white consciousness. But it stayed with the former slaves in their memories andmemorials, to re-emerge with great force in the mid-twentieth century, to transformAmerica. 7It is the handing down of these memories that places the Civil War in the forefront ofAmerican history. Memories are not only handed down formally through educationalinstitutions but informally as part of family history and community myths and tradition. Inthe South, says David Goldfield, history is not learned, it is handed down and what was25
Page 1 and 2: Greenwich Academic Literature Archi
Page 3: REEL WARS: COLD WAR, CIVIL RIGHTSAN
Page 6 and 7: ABSTRACTThis study is an examinatio
Page 8 and 9: ABBREVIATIONSAMPASAHRBirthCommissio
Page 10 and 11: Historians using film as a resource
Page 12 and 13: dominated America's foreign policy
Page 14 and 15: Mary L. Dudziak explores this relat
Page 17 and 18: pure and simple' and were therefore
Page 19 and 20: historical texts. Hayden White comp
Page 21 and 22: Historians, history films and film
Page 23 and 24: How have sympathetic film historian
Page 25 and 26: Therefore historians can, with over
Page 27 and 28: identity and these were taken as th
Page 29 and 30: 21 George F. Custen, 'Hollywood and
Page 31: 63 Rosenstone, The Historical Film,
Page 35 and 36: War.....[it] defined us as to what
Page 37 and 38: The Civil War and popular cultureJu
Page 39 and 40: memory,53 the place where Union and
Page 41 and 42: Despite being a new medium Hollywoo
Page 43 and 44: From the late 1940s Hollywood was u
Page 45 and 46: 1 William Faulkner, Requiem for a N
Page 47 and 48: 36 Blight, Race and Reunion, 77, 81
Page 49 and 50: mainly composed of members of the w
Page 51 and 52: there was cowardice, it was either
Page 53 and 54: This was another Lost Cause myth -
Page 55 and 56: stuff with plenty of clothes, rich
Page 57 and 58: women into or within slavery. 47 Th
Page 59 and 60: departure when, in the discussion o
Page 61 and 62: 1 William Dean Howells, Los Angeles
Page 63 and 64: 37 Melvyn Stokes, The Civil War in
Page 65 and 66: All races and religions, that's Ame
Page 67 and 68: Hollywood almost abandoned Civil Wa
Page 69 and 70: charged with disloyalty and silence
Page 71 and 72: ecover from the HUAC investigations
Page 73 and 74: a living. The daughters grow up to
Page 75 and 76: Gettysburg. 'You know,' says Henry,
Page 77 and 78: combining two great myths, which co
Page 79 and 80: (1948), Tom Dunson's style of autoc
Page 81 and 82: Patriotism became a white attribute
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In the absence of African Americans
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(Horizons West) and businessmen (An
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year later, and there was no lead f
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20 Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War, Civil
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56 Richard White, 'Western History'
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7 have seen the promised land.' 'Th
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those between whites and African Am
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change, to forget what made him, he
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eported that the film had 'already
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campaigning for Lincoln. John's rea
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lack/white relationships, in Civil
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McCarthy discredited and a more rel
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dispute which once divided our nati
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pressure, continued to hold. The me
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discrimination, attempts at univers
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talks about Lincoln pleading that '
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creativity. The Confederates use a
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police in Birmingham and Kennedy's
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1 Martin Luther King Jr.'s, speech,
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44 Blight, Race and Reunion, 8-11,
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- self-belief, reasons for fighting
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Sexploitation - which reversed the
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would surely recognise the Mexicans
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There are similar examples in Major
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on working class whites nor receive
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The conflict between civil rights a
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e trusted from the wiles of the mis
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field-hands are too valuable an inv
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moving the civil rights agenda to a
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McBurney, even though he is wounded
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Most reviewers were sympathetic, se
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conservatism,' as a natural ally fo
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By the early 1970s, Hollywood's opt
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20 Enoch, in Friendly Persuasion (1
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62 Johnson called what happened the
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The world is white no longer; and i
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proceed with civil rights legislati
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would have been counter to the poli
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mid-1990s was rejected as the compa
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those historians who were contestin
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1 James Baldwin, Stranger in the Vi
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39 Robert Brent Toplin, Reel Histor
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1210mmmto3sCT>The number of America
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There is a third problem - that of
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the Library of Congress and the Uni
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mainly contain copies of correspond
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killing. There were two other areas
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are 'no compensating moral values a
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epresented.' 32 However, this was t
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Reference has already been made to
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It is in the final period that anti
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22 Letter from Shurlock to William
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Year Director Company190819091910Ba
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191119121912Grant and LincolnHe Fou
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19131913Call to Arms, TheCarpenter,
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1915 Birth of a Nation, TheColonel
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19341935193619371938193919401941194
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Searchers, TheShowdown at AbileneTh
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Alien, Robert C., and Douglas Gomer
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Cassidy, John M., Civil War Cinema:
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Foner, Eric, Who Owns History, (New
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Landy, Marcia, (ed.), The Historica
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Prince, Stephen, A New Pot of Gold:
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Sternsher, Bernard, Consensus, Conf
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