Cinematic script as history

Winston Churchill called the American Civil War “the noblest and least avoidable” of the great wars up to that time. Mark Twain remarked that in the South, “the war is what A.D. is elsewhere; they date from it.”

The war has been a boon to publishers, who have produced more than 60,000 books dealing with it. The war also has been a boon to Hollywood, and the themes of various motion pictures over the decades have been analyzed as the subject of a book by a noted Civil War historian, Gary W. Gallagher of the University of Virginia.

Mr. Gallagher focuses on four major themes: the Lost Cause tradition, which downplays the importance of slavery and stresses Confederate gallantry against great odds; the Union Cause, which emphasizes the illegality of secession and the bravery of those who fought it; the Emancipation Cause, which sees the war primarily as a struggle to end slavery; and the Reconciliation Cause, which seeks to exalt the united nation that emerged from the conflict.

Mr. Gallagher examines 14 movies and a large quantity of Civil War art to discern how interpretation of the war has changed over the decades. For a time, the Lost Cause had the field largely to itself. In 1915, “Birth of a Nation” lauded the South and rationalized the Ku Klux Klan.

It was “Gone With the Wind,” however, released in 1939, that became the classic expression of the Lost Cause, with its depiction of the gallant South, especially Southern women. In it, Melanie Wilkes willingly parts with material things, including her wedding ring, for the Cause. Mr. Gallagher believes “Gone With the Wind” exposed generations of Americans to a positive depiction of the slaveholding South and a hostile treatment of Reconstruction.

More recently, the Lost Cause has had tough going. Mr. Gallagher states: “The Emancipation Cause has become the most influential of the four traditions in an industry where the Confederate narrative long held sway.” Since the release of “Glory” in 1989, only “Gods and Generals” has reflected a tilt toward the Lost Cause. This trend, the author suggests, reflects the civil rights movement and a disenchantment with the public display of Confederate symbols.

Mr. Gallagher is most interesting when he discusses the minimal recognition America has accorded the soldiers of the Union who — their own land and hearths not threatened — took to arms in defense of an abstraction: that the Union was indissoluble. To be sure, both sides were soon obliged to introduce conscription, but the strength and depth of pro-Union sentiment remains one of the remarkable features of the Civil War.

Film is rarely the best medium through which to convey ideas and concepts. Mr. Gallagher points out that recent Hollywood films “fail almost completely to convey any sense of what the Union Cause meant to millions of Northern citizens.” This tendency is abetted by Emancipation-oriented interpreters who view the war through the prism of slavery largely to the exclusion of other factors. Mr. Gallagher maintains that any assertion that the Union as such was not worth fighting for tends to trivialize the deaths of a third of a million Northern soldiers, most of whom saw themselves as fighting for the Union.

The author is careful not to pass artistic judgment on the films he analyzes, although the reader gets some clues to his opinions. With respect to “Gettysburg,” he notes wryly that “many of the re-enactors … brought too many years and too much excess flesh to the task of portraying Civil War soldiers.”

Mr. Gallagher’s refusal to pass artistic judgment proves especially useful in the section devoted to Civil War art. In contrast to Hollywood’s trend toward political correctness, Civil War prints — widely advertised in publications such as the Civil War Times — are overwhelmingly devoted to Lost Cause themes, with Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson the most frequent protagonists. Artworks produced in the past 25 years, the author concludes, would warm the hearts of the Confederates portrayed.

Popular art, Mr. Gallagher notes, reflects the power of films and TV. Characters that were prominent in Ken Burns’ TV series and in the movie “Gettysburg” star in Civil War art, and current depictions of famous generals sometimes resemble the actors who played them. The author notes that Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Union hero of Little Round Top, was little known before his exploits were shown on the screen. Today, Chamberlain is the Union officer most depicted in pop art, eclipsing even Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman.

One contemporary artist estimates that 60 percent of his prints go to buyers in the South, a circumstance he attributes to “the stronger interest among Southerners in the Civil War in general.”

Mr. Gallagher has provided a thoughtful and entertaining book that will engage anyone with an interest in the Civil War.

John M.. Taylor lives in McLean. His books include “Duty Faithfully Performed: Robert E. Lee and His Critics.”