The movie Gods and Generals is a movie based on a fictional book about the Civil War by Jeff Shaara. Jeff Shaara is the son of the author who wrote The Killer Angels, the book that Gettysburg was based on. The Gods and Generals is a prequel to Gettysburg. The movie shows the Battle of Bull Run (1861) and then moves forward to Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1863. This movie does not have as many battle scenes as Gettysburg. Instead the movie has long intervals of scenes about nostalgia for The South. Gallagher (2008) explained that Hollywood movies had started portraying the Civil War more realistically and with more respect for African Americans until God and Generals was produced in 2003 (42). For example, the movie Glory about an all black regiment was released in 1989. Cold Mountain was released in 2003. The movie Cold Mountain was based on another fictional book by the same title. Both the book and the movie revealed a difficult and heartbreaking picture of war. In the movie Gods and Generals the Confederate army looked like the soldiers were very well fed. The reality was that the Confederate soldiers were practically starving; they were also young men. The movie shows the Confederate soldiers as fat and older because the actors are members of Civil War Reenactment organizations (Gallagher, 2008)
Gods and Generals did not really have much historical relevance. The costumes and historical settings were interesting and the movie had a little entertainment value but other than that it was like watching a propaganda movie. The one good scene that was really powerful was when Robert E. Lee turned down President Abraham Lincoln’s request for him to lead the Union army. The movie’s main character was General Stonewall Jackson and he was played very well as the hero. It is interesting that General Jackson who died due to gunshot wounds from his own soldiers is very well-known as a military genius yet Union leaders who won the war are barely known. The way General Jackson died seems so embarrassing that making a hero of a general who died from friendly fire seems strange.
Gods and Generals starts with a long scene about a mother telling her two sons good-bye as the head of to the war as Confederate soldiers. It has all the classic elements of the Lost Cause. The mother and her daughters are sewing a Confederate flag for the sons to carry into war. The African American housekeeper, Martha, also hugs and kissed the young men good-bye. Then when the white family leaves to go to a safer place, Martha stays behind to guard the house. Later in the movie two men discuss their experiences with slavery. There slave experiences were full of benevolent acts of kindness from their masters. The terrible life of a slave was not talked about in this movie. Definitely none of the characters were abolitionists. Anything is possible and there may have been slaves that were treated as part of the family and slaves that were loved very much. The families that owned the slaves could have shown a real affection and respect for their slaves by giving the slave their freedom.
Another issue that is not discussed in the movie is the issue of tariffs and the economic need to have people work for free on the plantations in order to make a profit. The southern states did not want the North telling them how to run their businesses. The southern plantation owners did not want the Union to tell them their business either. The characters in the movie talk about loyalty to their states and to The South. They talk about the North as being an invading enemy. Especially in the part of the movie where Robert E. Lee is being asked to lead the two armies; first he is asked to lead the Union army which he turns down, then he is asked to lead the Confederate army. He accepts the offer from the Confederate army without mentioning slavery or tariffs. Instead the war is explained as an attack by one sovereign nation on another sovereign nation but that was not the case. South Carolina seceded and others followed. The Confederacy was formed after war had been declared. This point is something to question: was it legal for the South to secede from the Union? But the idea that the Confederacy was a sovereign nation under attack by an enemy is not factual.
Bush (2007) writes about the symbols of the Lost Cause. He suggests they are similar to religious symbols and hold important meaning for people who believe the Lost Cause mythology. (184) A few of the symbols are the Confederate flag, the benevolent slave master, happy slaves and the cleverness of the Southern generals plus their nobleness and chivalry. Bush (2007) explains.
One can reasonably consider the myth of the Lost Cause as more than a set of historical suppositions. Instead these detailed assertations comprise the heart of the southern civil religion as it had developed by the beginning of the war and which continued to motivate people for many decades afterwards. (184)
Higgins (2004) points out that by ignoring the realities of the Civil War and the defeat of the South by the North means that there is not much left for the Lost Cause to celebrate except for the “the soldiers to value” (119).
Gods and Generals seems to be a very popular movie because there many positive reviews of the movie on the Internet. Many people mention how exciting it was to have Robert Duvall play General Lee. The actor is a distant relative of the general. The movie portrays Lee as a saintly, loyal fellow. There is an atmosphere around him that could be called awe.
Higgins (2004) has a different opinion of Gods and Generals. He describes “Jeff M. Shaara’s Gods and Generals as a good example of . . . an easy avoidance of politics and either a gory obsession with the horrors of the war or a vapid celebration of heroes” (119). A historical fiction book that addresses the realities in the South better is considered to be Jacob’s ladder: A Story of Virginia during the War by Donald McCaig (2009). A character in the book discussing the war says “. . . in these mountain we are everywhere routed. Our new commander general, Robert Lee. Designed a grand strategy which has less failed as frizzled” (122). This is a novel recommended by Higgins (2004) as telling the Civil War story with less of an emphasis on the Lost Cause Myth.
Hettle (2005) discusses how the heroes of the South have been romanticized, admired as geniuses and misrepresented. He gives a description of how Samuel “Stonewall” Jackson’s character in the Lost Cause myth evolved from different sources of information. Hettle (2005) asked the question “How did Americans come to see Jackson as both strange and odd, an admixture of personal qualities captured indelibly in the image of the lemon-sucking warrior?” (para. 2). He explains that Jackson was not portrayed as an eccentric until a Virginia writer, John Esten Cooke, had articles published in the ‘Southern Illustrated News’ (para. 2). Before the image of Jackson from those articles became popular, Jackson was portrayed as very religious, pious, and a military genius but not strange. Hettle (2005) concludes that “Gods and Generals did not so much get the story wrong, as it followed an apocryphal detail that had crept into the historical literature” (para. 3).
There are a lot of books and journal articles about the Lost Cause myth. From the research for this paper it became clear that the more recent historical researchers are questioning the version of the Civil War that is the most popular. They are looking at primary sources like letters in order to learn and share an honest telling of Civil War history. It is very good to for students to understand that all they think they know about the Civil War may be from fictional accounts, not from serious historical research. Knowing that a myth of the Civil War is even written into some textbooks offers a whole new way to think about the Civil War.
Finally the movie Gods and Generals was much worse than Gettysburg in terms of showing an account of the Civil War based on the Lost Cause myth. The movie is a prequel to Gettysburg with a purpose to show the background of the characters that were portrayed. The characters that were explained were all from the South though. There was only two small parts about Chamberlain, when he was telling his wife about his decision to fight in the Civil War and when his brother showed up as a part of his regiment. Chamberlain seemed to be the only character who understood what being in a war met. He did not say very much in the movie but from his face especially he understood his burden and responsibility. His mood really dropped when his brother excitedly joined the regiment. It was obvious he was taking the war very seriously. This was a contrast to the Southern leaders who made many speeches about the glory of war.
Gallagher, Gary. Causes Won, Lost and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. 2008. Print.
References
Hettle, Wallace. “A Romantic's Civil War: John Esten Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, and the Ideal of Individual ‘Genius.’” The Historian, 67(3), 2005, 434. Print.
McCaig, Daniel. Jacob’s Ladder: A Story of Virginia during the War. New York, NY: Penguin Paperback. 2009. Print.
Reardon, Carol. The Gettysburg No One Knows. Gabors S. Boritt (ed.) New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.
Holsinger, M. Paul (ed.). War and American Popular Culture: A Historical Encyclopaedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1999. Print.
Sharp, Michael D. Popular Contemporary Writers, Vol. 9, New York, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 2006.
Bush Jr., Harold K. Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age. Tuscaloosa, AL University of Alabama Press.2007.
Oxfeld, Jesse. Shaara's March: Gods and Generals, the Prequel to the 1993 Adaptation of Michael Shaara's the Killer Angels, Reaches Theatres in February. Bringing It to the Screen Required Years of Work-And an Unlikely Passing of the Torch from Father to Son. Book, January-February 2003, 62.
Higgins, Andrew C. Reconstructing Rebellion: The Politics of Narrative in the Confederate Memoir. The Mississippi Quarterly. (58) 2004, 119.
