Strange Glory

Strange Glory (1938)

*** (out of 4)

Carey Wilson short from his "An Historical Mystery" series takes a look at the debate of who should get credit for the "Tennessee Plan", which pretty much helped the North win the Civil War. Eight years after President Lincoln was killed, Northerner Anna Ella Carroll (Fay Helm) came to say that she was the brain behind the plan and that she discussed it with Lincoln yet no one knows of their meeting or the reasons why the President thought they should keep it a secret until after the war. I really love this series from MGM as they offer up fascinating stories even though they are mainly thrown at the conspiracy theorist inside me. This episode is yet another interesting case that I had never heard about but it does make for a good mystery, which is the entire point of the series. Frank McGlynn, Sr. plays Lincoln here, a role that he would play over ten times in his career including the 1924 film ABRAHAM LINCOLN, John Ford's THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND and THE LITTLE REBEL. He is quite good here as is Helm as the woman behind the mystery. Director Tourneur does a very good job with the material and this is easy to see early on during the Civil War footage.

Seems that authorship of "The Tennessee Plan," a strategy for cutting the Confederacy in half during the American Civil War, was conceived by a woman, Anna Ella Carroll, who claims that she delivered the plan to President Abraham Lincoln in confidence.

Since Lincoln never credited anyone with the plan, it's unknown to this day whether her story is truthful or not. She goes before various committees over a period of twenty years or more and no conclusion is ever reached to verify her story. Lincoln was supposed to tell the nation when the war was over but it never happened.

Interesting little short from MGM, it deserves to be seen, well acted and presented by MGM and narrated by Carey Wilson.