Hamlette's Soliloquy: American Civil War

Showing posts with label American Civil War. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Ten Favorite American Civil War Movies

Every week, I watch a movie with my teens over lunch. During the school year, they take turns picking the movie to watch each week, but during the summer, I get to choose them. This summer, I chose to have us watch all kinds of movies set during the American Civil War. I realized while out at the Manassas Battlefield on a field trip last spring that, when I was a kid and teen, I had a really great grasp of the major events of the American Civil War because I had seen quite a few movies set during it, particularly the mini-series The Blue and the Gray (1982), which encompasses the whole war. And my kids didn't have that because we simply hadn't watched those movies yet. Sure, we had studied the war repeatedly during school over the years, but it's harder to envision how everything fits together when you are reading about it.

So, we spent the whole summer watching movies set during that war, plus a few that take place shortly after it but are strongly influenced by it. I eventually added a couple more to the list above as we went, and we didn't manage to watch quite all of them, but my teens now have a good grasp of the basic sequence of events in the American Civil War.

Inspired by our summer viewing, I decided to share my list of my Top Ten Favorite American Civil War movies. Here they are!

1. The Blue and the Gray (1982) Yeah, yeah, technically a miniseries. Anyway! This is a masterful piece of storytelling that focuses on a young Virginia artist (John Hammond) who has abolitionist leanings and family on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. He and his extended family and friends end up mixed up in just about every major piece of the war, from John Brown's execution to the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. It delves thoroughly and entertainingly into the difficulty of a war fought between brothers, cousins, and friends. I grew up watching it every year or two, and I absolutely credit it with giving me a thorough grasp of the main sequence of events of the war. Also, nobody but Gregory Peck should ever be allowed to play President Lincoln.

2. Gettysburg (1993) A talented ensemble cast shows many of the events leading up to and during the battle that is now considered the turning point of the American Civil War. Jeff Daniels turns in a particularly wonderful performance as Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, one of my personal heroes.

3. Little Women (1994) Four sisters grow up in New England under their mother's guidance while their father is away with the Union Army. People don't tend to think of this as a Civil War story, but the war influences everything in their daily lives, sometimes more overtly and sometimes subtly.

4. How the West was Won (1962) A sprawling saga tracing the lives of two sisters (Debbie Reynolds and Carroll Baker) who move west as young women, and the lives of their husbands and children. The Civil War is technically only shown onscreen briefly, but its echoes sound out across the rest of the movie as it follows the son of one sister, a veteran who heads west and uses his experiences in the war to inform his decisions from then on.

5. Shenandoah (1965) A Virginia farmer (James Stewart) insists on his large family never getting involved in the Civil War that rages around them, but there is no way for him to keep them isolated from it forever.

6. Friendly Persuasion (1956) A Quaker family tries to remain neutral during the Civil War, but there is no way for them to remain uninvolved forever. Anthony Perkins is so likeable in this.

7. The Horse Soldiers (1969) A Union Cavalry colonel (John Wayne) sneaks his troops deep into Confederate territory to destroy the railroads and hasten Union victory, but he has this pesky medical officer (William Holden) along who keeps causing problems.

8. Harriet (2019) Biopic of Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) that portrays her escape from slavery and courageous rescue of so many others. I ended up not watching this one with my teens this summer because it is pretty stern stuff and I think my youngest won't be ready for it for another year or so, but it's an excellent movie.

9. Gone with the Wind (1939) Eating radishes straight out of the ground after drinking whiskey on an empty stomach convinces a spoiled Southern belle (Vivien Leigh) that she will do anything necessary to avoid repeating that sensation.

10. The Undefeated (1969) A former Union cavalryman (John Wayne) teams up with a former Confederate officer (Rock Hudson) to get a herd of horses and a wagon train of people safely to Mexico. Technically takes place just after the war, but the war echoes all through the film, so I say it counts, and it's my list, so there ;-)

Have you seen any of these? Do you have other favorite Civil War movies? Are you aghast that I left Gods and Generals (2003) off this list? Do tell!

Friday, January 05, 2024

Quiet Gallantry: General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

I was in my early teens when they released the movie Gettysburg (1993). My family rented it as soon as it hit the local video store. We settled down for a deeply moving, relatively accurate depiction of the battle at Gettysburg that turned the tide of the American Civil War in favor of the Union.

The film more than exceeded my family’s the expectations and mine in particular. It introduced me to a historical figure who became a personal hero: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Sympathetically portrayed by Jeff Daniels, he stole my imagination. I eagerly looked him up in my history books later to learn more about him.

Only, my history books didn’t say much about him. Chamberlain was not a big, famous Civil War personality by the 1990s. My history curriculum had a lot to say about Lee, Grant, Stuart, and Jackson, but not a soft-spoken college professor whose courage and gallantry earned him the devotion of the men he led and the respect of his opponents. It wasn’t until I got to college and could take a semester-long course in Civil War history that I could really learn more about him.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was born in Maine in 1828. Drawn to studying languages, possibly because he stuttered as a child, he overcame many personal obstacles to win a position as a professor of languages and rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. When war arrived, thirty-four-year-old Chamberlain volunteered, leaving behind his career and his wife and children to fight for a cause he believed in wholeheartedly: ending slavery.

Although he had no military experience, Chamberlain’s education gained him the rank of lieutenant colonel in the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment. Chamberlain had studied military history as a boy, and now he read every book on tactics and maneuvers he could find. He drilled his men endlessly and, though they resented the work, they learned to appreciate their new leader. Chamberlain tried to live as much like the enlisted men as he could, even though his status as an officer entitled him to better food and sleeping quarters.

In late June 1863, the 20th Maine marched toward a little Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg where they had finally stopped the invading Confederate army. His superiors tasked Chamberlain with dealing with 120 mutineers from a different Maine unit. Unless they wanted to be shot, he must convince them to behave. Chamberlain talked to the men. He realized their unit had mistreated and misunderstood them. He promised that if they would fight as part of his regiment, the Union would not punish them for their previous mutiny. In the film Gettysburg, Chamberlain makes a quiet yet impassioned speech that reminds the soldiers why they’re all in this fight. That speech made me sit up and take notice of him.

Chamberlain and his men saw some of the most intense fighting of the entire battle. Ordered to hold a small hill called Little Round Top at all costs, they faced overwhelming Confederate forces and only maintained their position through Chamberlain’s knowledge of military strategy and bold leadership. Wave after wave of Confederate troops crashed against their line, only to be repelled.

Wounded in the foot, his men running desperately low on ammunition, and facing another Confederate advance, Chamberlain made a bold decision. He ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge downhill, straight at their enemies. His men were exhausted, but the Confederates had been fighting uphill the entire time, and they could not withstand the downward rush of Chamberlain and his men. Hundreds of them surrendered. They won the day.

That evening, a limping Chamberlain and his remaining forces crept up nearby Big Round Top and captured it from a much larger force. The Union’s control of these two hills turned the tide of the battle, which began the slow end of the Confederate supremacy on the battlefield.

Chamberlain received a wound in the leg and abdomen the next summer. General Grant gave him a deathbed promotion to brigadier general, the only battlefield promotion Grant gave during the entire war. Chamberlain did not die. After a slow recovery, he returned to active duty, only to be wounded again in the battle of Petersburg, where he turned a rout into a victory. They promoted him to major general for his gallant leadership. Now leading a division of 10,000 men, he joined the final pursuit of General Lee and his ragged army.

Finally, the Union army trapped Lee in Virginia, near Appomattox. Messengers from General Lee met with General Chamberlain under a flag of truce and asked him to inform General Grant that Lee was ready to surrender. After they signed the terms of surrender, Grant chose Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the soft-spoken college professor from Maine, to accept the Confederate army‘s formal surrender.

Then Chamberlain made a decision he knew would gain him a lot of criticism from people in the north. A decision that cemented him in my heart as a true hero. When the defeated Confederate soldiers reached the Union troops, Chamberlain gave the order for his men to stand at attention and salute their former enemies. Rather than humiliate his foes or glory in their defeat, he insisted on showing them the respect their courage in battle had earned. This action received harsh criticism from many in the North, but it endeared Chamberlain to people in the South and helped make the surrender a peaceful transition.

After the war, Chamberlain returned to teaching at Bowdoin College until elected governor of Maine. He served four terms, then returned to private life and served as president of Bowdoin College, dying a beloved hero in 1914.

(This post originally appeared in Femnista magazine on May 22, 2019.)

Friday, March 03, 2023

Shadows and Light: "The Blue and the Gray" (1982)

Some stories I first experienced at a young age feel as if they’ve always been a part of me. The 1982 miniseries The Blue and the Gray is one such tale. I can’t remember the first time my parents rented it on VHS. Nor the first time I made friends with the characters who inhabit it. It’s as if I’ve always known the Geyser family, their history, and how it’s bound up with our country’s struggle to truly become “the land of the free.”

The Blue and the Gray follows a young man named John Geyser (John Hammond). Born and raised on a Virginia farm but employed by a Northern newspaper as a sketch artist, his loyalties and affections are tugged this way and that as the nation staggers toward open conflict. When a free Black friend of John’s gets lynched for harboring fugitive slaves, John becomes a staunch abolitionist in one night, storming away from his family and vowing he’ll have nothing more to do with them.

John makes friends with a Union officer named Jonas Steele (Stacy Keach), who is my favorite character. Jonas is a secretive, mysterious man who is part spy, part Secret Service agent. Things in his past haunt him, though he won’t speak much of them. He takes a liking to John Geyser, recognizing his artistic talent, and their paths cross often. Jonas sometimes gets John a little closer to an important event or other, and John eventually invites Jonas back to his uncle’s home. There, Jonas falls in love with John’s cousin Mary (Julia Duffy).

Between them, John and Jonas seem to be present at just about every important occurrence during the American Civil War. They meet at John Brown’s trial and hanging. John meets his future wife at the First Battle of Bull Run. Jonas introduces John to President Lincoln (Gregory Peck) so John can sketch his portrait. John stumbles about the aftermath of the Vicksburg siege in search of his sister. And weaving all around them are John’s siblings and cousins, some fighting for the North, others for the South.

John learns over the course of the story that life is more complicated than the black and white drawings the newspapers print. Life is like his original drawings, shaded with many variations of gray. Shadows and light intermingle on the paper and in the real world. He must come to terms with his own human frailty and fierceness and the mixture of good and evil around him. For a time, it seems as if the horrors of war he witnesses will overwhelm John’s sensitive nature. Tragedy strikes his family again and again, just like every family involved in the war. But good comes out of it too. John and his family members tentatively begin healing, just as the country begins to do, when the war finally ends.

It’s hard for me to think of many Civil War battles and other events without thinking of this miniseries, especially now that I live in Virginia. I’m not far from Manassas, site of the first and second Battles of Bull Run. John loses one of his brothers in the horrible inferno that consumed much of the Battle of the Wilderness; I live less than an hour from where that battle occurred. In fact, I have to drive through the Wilderness Battlefield State Park when I visit friends. It is always unsettling and eerie, for bits of this series flit through my memory and make me shudder. Of all battles in that war, I think the Wilderness scares me the most, and that’s largely due to how it’s portrayed in The Blue and the Gray. Sometimes, film and fiction can be almost too real to me.

On the other hand, I’ll always imagine that President Lincoln sounded like Gregory Peck. That’s a wonderful voice to hear in your head when you read the Gettysburg Address. This miniseries also introduced me to the music of Bruce Broughton, whose scores have delighted me ever since. More than all of that, this story instilled in me early on the conviction that freeing slaves was a just and righteous reason to fight a war, but there were good and decent people on both sides of the conflict. Neither side was all good or all bad, but had people of both light and shadow.

Above all, The Blue and the Gray impressed on me the awful toll that war takes on people. War tears families apart, injures people’s minds and their bodies, and affects every aspect of the lives of those involved. That’s a lesson I’ve held onto all my life, and it informs my own storytelling to this day.

(This post originally appeared in Femnista magazine on November 2, 2020.)

Monday, May 31, 2021

My Ten Favorite Movies Featuring Fallen Heroes

Today is Memorial Day here in the USA, which means I'm taking some time to thank God for all the brave people who have laid down their lives in defense of our country and our freedom. It's the sort of day when I'd like to pull a movie off my shelves that honors and memorializes such sacrifices. I've put together a list of my ten favorite movies that feature an American soldier paying the ultimate price, just in case you're looking for ideas of something to watch today.

None of these films glorify war. Instead, they show the terrible price paid by so many men and women to ensure that our freedom is kept safe, and to help free others around the world.

1. Midway (2019)

Historically accurate, dazzling, elegant presentation of the early Pacific Theater of Operations during WWII, from the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, through the Battle of Midway June 4-7, 1942. One of the best movies I have ever seen.

2. Hell is for Heroes (1962)

One small American squad (Bobby Darin, Steve McQueen, Fess Parker, James Coburn, Bob Newhart...) holds off a Nazi attack thanks to lots of clever ruses and some spectacular sacrifices. This was written by Robert Pirosh, who also created my beloved Combat!, and this whole movie almost feels like a long episode of the show.

3. Operation Pacific (1951)

Commander Duke Gifford (John Wayne) leads a submarine crew on a bunch of adventures (most of them based on actual WWII events) and tries to win back his ex-wife (Patricia Neal). This was my son's favorite movie when he was six.

4. Captain Newman, MD (1963)

Darkly tragicomic story of Captain Newman (Gregory Peck), an Army psychiatrist trying to help American soldiers deal with and overcome mental and emotional trauma they've sustained during the war. Some, he helps. Some, he can't reach. Angie Dickinson and Tony Curtis play a nurse and an aid, while the troubled soldiers are played by people like Bobby Darin, Robert Duvall, and Eddie Albert. Although there are no actual battle scenes, at least one soldier who is healed enough to return to combat is later killed, which lends a lot of gravitas to the story. Important note: Bobby Darin received an Oscar nod for his role in this.

5. The Longest Day (1962)

The story of the D-Day invasion, told from many viewpoints, with one of the most impressive casts ever assembled: John Wayne, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Sal Mineo, Richard Todd, and a very young Sean Connery, to name a very few. Until we had kids and lost our big chunks of movie-watching time, Cowboy and I used to watch this together every D-Day.

6. Gettysburg (1993)

The story of the battle that tipped the balance of the American Civil War in favor of the Union Army. It's loaded with wonderful actors like Martin Sheen, Sam Elliott, C. Thomas Howell, and Tom Berenger. This movie introduced me to one of my personal heroes, Colonel (at the time) Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels).

7. The Patriot (2000)

A widower (Mel Gibson) refuses to take up arms in the American Revolution for a long time, but his son (Heath ledger) fights valiantly for the Patriot cause, and his father eventually realizes he must take his own stand for freedom. I haven't been able to watch this since we lost Heath Ledger in 2008, but I'm hoping I'll be able to again one day.

8. Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)

We get to know a squad of Marine recruits, led by Sgt. Stryker (John Wayne), as they prepare for the assault on Iwo Jima. The recruits view Stryker as a cold-blooded bully, but when they actually hit the beach, they understand at last what he was trying to teach them.

9. Mister Roberts (1955)

Mister Roberts (Henry Fonda) wants to get off the Navy cargo ship where he's assigned and onto a battleship so he can take part in WWII before it's over. But his cruel captain (James Cagney) refuses to sign his transfer papers. Other sailors, including Ensign Pulver (Jack Lemmon) and Doc (William Powell), have their own agendas. This is kind of a dark comedy. Lemmon won an Oscar for his supporting role.

10. We Were Soldiers (2002)

The story of American forces preparing for and enduring their first major battle in Vietnam. Mel Gibson, Sam Elliott, Greg Kinnear, and Barry Pepper all turn in unforgettable performances.

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

"Harriet" (2019) -- Initial Thoughts

Biopics are always tricky to balance. You've got to remain fairly faithful to a the real events of the person's life, because if they're famous enough to have a movie made about them, they're famous enough that a LOT of people know a LOT about them. They will be quick to point out your errors if you deviate too far from fact, or if you spin a story to suit an agenda that the person in question was not a part of.

But you also have to make the story of a real person's life interesting. And real life has a lot of boring parts. Even the real life of a famous, courageous, heroic person. You need to tell a cohesive story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and some central message or point to your story. Real life often lacks cohesion, messages, and points. But a biopic is not a documentary -- it promises good storytelling, not a recitation of facts. So you need to find a way to portray a person's life within the framework of a story.

Also, you need to be telling the audience something new, something that makes your movie worth seeing for those who are familiar with the story of your subject's life.

So much to balance. So tricky.

So few biopics manage to balance all of that successfully.

I went to see Harriet (2019) this weekend. Now, most of what I know about Harriet Tubman, I learned by reading my copy of Freedom Train (by Dorothy Sterling) over and over as a child. I'm going to remedy that shortly -- I've put several books about her on hold at the library, but none of them are in yet.

Anyway. I re-read Freedom Train today so I could refresh my memory as to the actual facts of Harriet Tubman's life. It's a biography for kids, told like a story, but I trust it more than I do a movie, to be honest. I'll review it on my book blog soon, on its own. But if you're looking for a quick way to introduce yourself or a kid to Harriet Tubman's life, it's an excellent resource.

Okay, so the basic facts as presented by the movie were correct. Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Maryland, escaped as a young woman, then became a conductor on the Underground Railroad and went back into the slave states to bring out her siblings and parents, plus many more.

But you know movie makers. They love to spice things up. I don't mean that in a sexual way, in this case, but in a "let's add something weird to make this movie more interesting." As if the story of this brave, stubborn, intelligent woman wasn't actually interesting enough. They took the fact that Harriet Tubman suffered a head injury that made her randomly fall asleep and they twisted that, giving her visions from God that aided and guided her. They made her seem like a mystical, possibly delusional woman, and other characters dismiss her as crazy or brain-damaged or imagining things.

HOW IS THIS BETTER than the truth, that Harriet Tubman was a woman of indomitable courage and solid faith in God? I think they were trying to make her seem "special" and "gifted," but to me, it does the opposite. It makes it look like it's God, not Harriet Tubman, who's leading people to freedom. They robbed her of her dignity and free will and turned her into a sort of sideshow curiosity. In my opinion. I was not a fan of this choice.

[EDIT: According to the book She Came to Slay by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Harriet Tubman did say she experienced visions when she was unconscious, which she believed came from God and often served as warnings about bad things about to happen. So there is some basis in her life story for how they portray this in the film. However, that book didn't say she ever invited the visions the way they show in the film, and they used these visions FAR too often as a sort of Deus ex machina to suddenly avert disasters, so I still say it's weak storytelling/writing.]

Now, the film on a whole is really good. There are some amazing chase scenes, there's overall a lot of excellent acting, the music is great, and the pacing was very good indeed. Cynthia Erivo portrays Harriet as fierce and yet frightened, and I was fully invested in her portrayal, with the exception of the mystical visions from God, which I blame the screenwriters and so on for, not her.

Is this movie family friendly? Wellllllllllllllllll... there's no nudity, and most violence is implied... but there's some pretty bad language (including the F-word), there are a lot of very tense chase scenes, some discussion of white masters having slave children who look like them, mention of young girls being raped, talk of spending money on whores, and several instances of seeing people's scars from whipping, burning, or other violence. So I'd say it's not for children or younger teens.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

My Ten Favorite War Movies

I had to wait to finalize this list until I'd seen Monuments Men a second time, to know whether or not it really belonged on this list. It does. I've seen most of these many times, some of them more than twenty. The only other exception is Defiance, which I've also only seen twice, but which is so phenomenal I must love it.

You'll notice a lot of patterns here. Lots of WWII movies. Lots of big ensemble casts. Lots of true stories. Lots of John Wayne, though interestingly, he's not in either of my top 2 movies. Those both feature Steve McQueen and James Coburn. Hmm. Anyway, most of these are also from the '50s and '60s, when war movies were still about heroes. In the '70s, war movies got cynical, and I find them depressing.

1. The Great Escape (1963)

The Nazis brilliantly put all their worst eggs (Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, James Garner...) in one prison camp, and naturally all those escape artists work together to escape. I love this on so many levels, from the whole band-of-misfits-working-together angle to the clever planning to the actual escape itself. And it's based on a true story!

2. Hell is for Heroes (1962)

One small American squad (Bobby Darin, Steve McQueen, Fess Parker, James Coburn, Bob Newhart...) holds off a Nazi attack thanks to lots of clever ruses and some spectacular sacrifices. This was written by Robert Pirosh, who also created my beloved Combat!, and this whole movie almost feels like a long episode of the show. Lots of human interest, some great humor, heroics, and my dearest Bobby Darin. LOVE!

3. Operation Pacific (1951)

Commander Duke Gifford (John Wayne) leads a submarine crew on a bunch of adventures (most of them based on actual WWII events) and tries to win back his ex-wife (Patricia Neal). My 6-year-old son asks to watch this at least once a month right now. This is a clean and lovely movie.

4. The Longest Day (1962)

The story of the D-Day invasion, told from many viewpoints, with one of the most impressive casts ever assembled: John Wayne, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Sal Mineo, Richard Todd, and a very young Sean Connery, to name a very few. Until we had kids and lost our big chunks of movie-watching time, Cowboy and I used to watch this together every D-Day.

5. Gettysburg (1993)

Another talented ensemble cast shows many of the events leading up to and during the turning point of the American Civil War. Jeff Daniels turns in a wonderful performance as Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberalain, one of my personal heroes.

6. Monuments Men (2014)

A special American task force tries to rescue important art from the Nazis. Another great ensemble cast (Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, John Goodman, George Clooney), and another true story.

7. Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)

Sgt. Stryker (John Wayne) takes a group of Marines from boot camp to the battle of Iwo Jima. This is one of John Wayne's sadder, more multi-faceted characters.

8. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

A bunch of Allied POWs (including William Holden and Alec Guinness) build a bridge for their Japanese captors, then try to blow it up. A fascinating study in morale and endurance. And a true story.

9. Defiance (2008)

Three Jewish brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell) in Nazi-occupied Poland help lots of other Jews hide out in the Belarussian forest. Gets grim and intense, but so, so good. And guess what? Another true story!

10. D-Day: The Sixth of June (1956)

A woman who's engaged to a British officer (Richard Todd) falls in love with an American officer (Robert Taylor), and both men end up storming the Normandy beaches together. Personally, I think anyone who ditches Richard Todd for Robert Taylor is an idiot.

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain -- My Hero

Yes, it's Hero Week over at The Story Girl! As my contribution, I've decided to blog about General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and why he is one of my personal heroes.

The real General Chamberlain

It all started when my family discovered the movie Gettysburg (1993) shortly after it was released to VHS. We loved it. We watched many, many times. And from the first viewing, my brother and I were drawn to Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) and his younger brother Tom (C. Thomas Howell), who was his aide-de-camp. They have a sweet, teasing relationship, one of the better depictions of brothers I've seen. Tom keeps calling his brother 'Lawrence,' and Chamberlain keeps telling him not to because he's afraid the other men will think he's only made Tom his aide because he's his brother. Chamberlain has sworn to keep Tom safe, and he figures the best way to do that is to keep him close.

Tom and Lawrence Chamberlain in Gettysburg

If that weren't enough to make me like him, Chamberlain makes this really awesome speech during the movie, all about how the Union army is fighting to set other men free, something that he says has never really been done before in the history of mankind. It's a beautiful speech, and he makes it to a bunch of would-be-deserters that he's been tasked with adding to his ranks just before the battle.

Chamberlain speechifying

And if that weren't really enough, Chamberlain also then heroically leads the fight at the Battle of Little Round Top, where he and a handful of men repulse charge after charge by the Confederate Army. They run low on ammunition, so he orders his men to fix bayonets and charge, a textbook move no one else thought of doing. And it works.

(Also, he quotes Hamlet in one scene. Heart!)

One more shot of Jeff Daniels as Chamberlain just cuz it's a nifty shot

So yeah... I really loved Chamberlain in this movie. Brave, kind, resourceful -- what's not to love? While in college, I learned that he had written a memoir, and determined to find it. Soon after I graduated, I bought a copy and read it. And that book cemented Chamberlain's status as my hero.

Before I go on, I need to explain that I was born in Iowa, then moved to Michigan when I was three. But when I was twelve, we moved to North Carolina. Until then, I had always thought of the Civil War as something that happened so long ago that no one really cared about it anymore. But, when I moved to the South, I discovered that people there still cared a lot about it. They had lost, they had been humiliated thanks to Reconstruction, they had been looked down on ever since. The defeat their forefathers suffered still stung. I've lost count of how many bumper stickers I've seen that say things like "Yankees, go home!" or "We don't care how you do it up North." I've been called a "d--n Yankee," right to my face. None of that has anything to do with racism or slavery or even politics, just with people feeling like they're still being looked down on just because they were born south of the Mason-Dixon line.

So, over the past twenty years, I have come to sympathize with the Southerners a great deal. Not with slavery or anything to do with that, but just with the people who live in the South, and those who lived there back during the Civil War. Yes, they fought a war that, at its core, was about protecting the ugly institution of slavery. But that didn't mean they needed to be ground into the dirt by the North's boot once they'd lost.

Okay, so that is why what Chamberlain did at the end of the war meant so much to me. By war's end, he was a general; he'd received the Medal of Honor; he'd become very respected as a military tactician even though, before the war, he was a college professor. Of foreign languages. At Appomattox Courthouse, he had the honor of accepting the surrender of the Confederate infantry after General Lee signed the surrender. And it is what he did there that makes me honor and revere him so.

I'm just going to quote directly from Chamberlain's book here because I could never explain it so well. His words here give me chills every time I read them and envision the scene -- Union troops lining the road down which the defeated Confederates must march to surrender their weapons. Here's what he says:

The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in th eleast. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond; -- was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?

Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry" -- the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, -- honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!

(p. 195-196. Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. The Passing of the Armies. Bantam edition, 1993.)

Oh, how that magnanimous, that gentlemanly action warms my heart. Chamberlain took a good bit of grief for his actions, as he expected he would, but he stood by them as honorable and right. It is his refusal to disgrace or mock the brave Confederate soldiers, his insistence that they be respected -- that is what makes Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain my hero.

Chamberlain in later years.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Day 17 - Favorite mini series

The Blue and the Gray (1982). This is another one I grew up with -- my parents rented it several times when I was a kid, and for years, whenever I thought or read about the American Civil War, images from this series were the first to come to my mind. Although it's pretty long and would take my family a couple days to get through, I always wanted to watch just a little more.

The Blue and the Gray centers around a young artist named John Geyser (John Hammond), who grows up on a Virginia farm along with three brothers and one sister. John leaves home to work as an artistic correspondent for his uncle's newspaper in the North, where he gets to attend the trial and execution of John Brown (Sterling Hayden). While he's home on a visit, one of his friends, a former slave named Jonathan Henry (Paul Winfield), is lynched for harboring runaway slaves. John Geyser renounces his Southern ties, breaks with his parents (Lloyd Bridges and Colleen Dewhurst), and leaves home for good.

John Geyser and Jonas Steele

John keeps doing dispatch art for his uncle, and keeps meeting up with my favorite character, a mysterious man named Jonas Steele (Stacy Keach). Jonas is in the Secret Service, sorta. As the Civil War erupts, John's brothers enlist in the Confederate Army, while the cousins he now lives with enlist in the Union Army. John falls in love with a lovely nurse named Kathy (Kathleen Beller), whom he rescues during the first battle of Manassas. Kathy's dad is a senator (Robert Vaughn) who doesn't think John's a suitable match for his daughter, but of course that doesn't really bother John and Kathy, being very modern young people. Meanwhile, Jonas Steele falls in love with John's cousin Mary (Julia Duffy).

Gregory Peck as Abraham Lincoln

The war rages on around John and Jonas, various other characters die, and before the war ends, both John and Jonas go a little crazy in their own ways, but survive. And John gets to draw the portrait of President Lincoln (Gregory Peck, to me the best Lincoln ever). The war ends, and John eventually reconciles with what's left of his family.

Andrew V. McLaglen directed the whole miniseries. According to imdb.com, it was originally more than 6 hours long, but all you can get on DVD is a recut version that's about 5 hours long. I saw it many times on VHS, and I honestly can't tell what they cut out, and, so either it was recut for VHS also, or what they cut out was entirely unmemorable. If you like Civil War movies, family dramas, and epics that follow around a couple characters and watch them change (what Deb Koren calls my Rambley Movies), you'll dig it. I like it better than North & South -- it's less soap-opera-esque, for one thing . And Stacy Keach more than makes up for the absence of Patrick Swayze, in my opinion.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

If I needed one more reason to love Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, here it is. During a battle near Petersburg, after having been wounded in the side and dehorsed, the following occurred:

"By a sudden backset I found myself surrounded by Confederates, who courteously lowered their muskets and locked their bayonets around me to indicate a reception not easily to be declined, and probably to last some time. The old coat was dingy almost to gray; I was bare-headed, and rather a doubtful character anyway. I thought it warrantable to assume an extremely friendly relation. To their exhortation I replied: 'Surrender? What's the matter with you? What do you take me for? Don't you see these Yanks right on us? Come along with me and let us break 'em.' I still had my right arm and my light sword, and I gave a slight flourish indicating my wish and their direction. They did follow me like brave fellows,--most of them too far; for they were a long time getting back." (p 37, Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. The Passing of the Armies. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.)

Okay, it was a bit mean to the Confederates, but extremely brilliant (and kind of funny, I think). Just thought I'd share :-)

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

I'm reading The Passing of the Armies by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain right now. My copy is part of Bantam Books' 'Eyewitness to the Civil War' series. He's making some really great observations (as can be expected from a man who was a professor, a governor, and president of a college besides rising to the rank of brevet major general in the Union army), and I think I'll share them here quickly, and a few thoughts on them. Here are two things JLC has said so far that struck me:

"The North was as arbitrary as the South was arrogant" (p 21).* Thank you! A Union writer (a general in their army, no less) who freely and of his own volition states that the North was not perfect. Of course, the South was not perfect either. From what I've studied of the Civil War (and I admit that's not much; I just took a one-semester course in it and have read some stuff on my own), I think those two words--'arbitrary' and 'arrogant'--perfectly describe the attitudes of the opposing forces. The North thought they were right and would let nothing stand in their way, not even themselves. The South thought they were right and thought they could lick overwhelming opposing forces. Proving once again that all people are stupid. (Yes, even me, far too often).

"...instant advantage is not always lasting achievement..." (p 22).* This just makes me ruminate more about everyday life now than the Civil War. It feels so true! People who think they have it all because things have been handed to them on the proverbial silver platter are not usually going to be remembered for anything more than stupidity and arrogance and how fast they were forgotten. The song "High Flying, Adored" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's opera "Evita" comes to mind, with the lines about "a shame you did it all at twenty-three" and "for someone on top of the world, the view is not exactly clear". Or think about pop icons who come quickly to the head of their business (one-hit wonders of all kinds) and then two years later we can't remember their name. But the people who work slowly toward what they want, like the Beatles, Creed, Bobby Darin, Harrison Ford--the people who put in the time as underlings and nobodys before becoming interesting (this works for politics too I suppose, and of course for any sort of great artist, writer, musician...)--have much more of a lasting influence (if you haven't heard of Bobby Darin and are wondering what sort of lasting influence he could have had, check out a lot of recent soundtracks, and you'll find him everywhere. More about him later. Much more). This gives me hope for my own future as a writer because as yet I haven't done much, but I've been published in a few little magazines, I was editor of the college literary magazine for two years...I've been putting in my time. Maybe my day will come too.

*(Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. The Passing of the Armies. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.)

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