Chris Messner

History 130 Paper 3

The War that They Wanted

If I were to walk into a classroom full of students, and asked

them, Whom would you have fought for in the Civil War? I bet it
would only take a matter of seconds before everyone had decided.
Most likely, everyone in the room would say the North. The main
reason that anyone would say the South would most likely be that they
believe in what we termed in class as The Lost Cause (Trainor, 9 April
2015), though this viewpoint is not expressed very often. The Lost
Cause represents the belief that the South was actually trying to make
the nation a better place, and they were not simply the bad guys.
Whereas most of the mainstream media prefers to depict the Civil War
as the war that the North needed to win, in order to free the slaves. In
class we called it, Union Triumphalism (Trainor, 7 April 2015). This is
the reverse ideology of the Lost Cause, it is the belief that the South
was immoral and antiquated, and that the North had to beat them
down to save the nation. The main point I am making is that no matter
how each person could justify their claim, most people would know
immediately what side they would prefer to fight for. This ability to
choose sides so readily stems from how society remembers the war.

The Civil War is remembered today with exaggerated bravado and onesidedness due to attention-grabbing, ardent filmography. While this
sense of heroism and glory tends to cut out the true meaning of the
war and its dueling factions, it is the only way that people will
remember it. Even though there are various reasons for favoring one
side over the other (ancestry, geographic location, political beliefs),
these potential reasons seem to be overshadowed by the dramatic
depictions of the war. People generally pick the North, because in
movies the North is almost always represented as the good side. In
both of the films, Glory and Lincoln, the South is the enemy, and they
are causing all the trouble, so the viewer cannot help by sympathize
with the North. Glory deals with the fighting, and portrays how savage
and terrifying these men in grey were, with a little bit of fiction for
drama. Lincoln sticks to more realistic ideology, and is centered on
Lincolns fight against the Souths vice grip on slavery, as the president
rushes to outlaw it before the war can end and the Southerners are
introduced back into the Union. Tony Horwitzs book For Cause and
Comrades is a pleasant contrast to this common presentation of Union
Triumphalism, by realistically showing how people can have personal
connections to the South as well. But in the end the book is not
enough to counterbalance the effect that the movies have on societys
current sentiments towards the Civil War. What the movies portray is
what people want to see, and in the end the movies help people

remember the Civil War, better than any factual comparison of both
sides truly can. People remember what they want to remember, and
what they want to remember is a happy ending. The heroes saved the
day. Horwitz does a good job giving examples of both sides of the
conflict, but the action and heroism of the movies catch peoples
attention more effectively. This attention grabbing and moral coddling
is what lets the Civil War live on in our memories, and what molds our
perception of the war today. That being said, Glory has much more
action than Lincoln, which provokes more emotions. Therefore Glory is
better at commemorating the Civil War.
The film Glory followed the adventure of the 54th regiment, the
first American all black regiment. The main character is the
commander, Robert Gould Shaw, and the story is also about his
attempt to gain equality and acceptance for his men. The men train
really hard and put in the same effort if not more than the other
regiments but still the Union higher ups refuse to let them fight. After
Shaw advocates for them strongly, and then men continue to prove
their worth to Shaw, they are finally allowed to enter combat. Breaking
all racial tensions, the men rush into battle and are slain for their
nation, and their people.
Lincoln was much less glorious than Glory, the reason for this
being that it was focused on the politics behind the ratification of the
13th amendment, and not on the thrill of the war. In fact, the movie

hardly shows any action or fighting at all, only the aftermath. The
movie draws its thrills from the tension around passing the
amendment, and what passing it would mean for the nation. The plot
revolves around what president Lincoln and his cabinet (mainly
Secretary of State Seward) does to ratify the 13th amendment
outlawing slavery. Lincoln could probably wait, however he wants to
pass the amendment before the southern states come back into the
Union. Lincoln goes after lame duck Democrats on their way out of
office, hoping the Democrats will change their minds about slavery
now that they do not need to behave a certain way to get votes. Much
persuasion and debate ensues, but with the help of Thaddeus Stevens,
the men of congress reach a decision, ratifying the 13th amendment.
Lincoln is subsequently shot and killed at the Theater the next night,
and the movie ends with a flashback to Lincolns most powerful
speech, his second inaugural address.
Tony Horwitzs Confederates in the Attic had a theme revolving
around finding personal connections to the war. These connections
help the reader see the war in the perspectives of both the North and
South, because the people who he spoke to are modern-day
sympathizers. After Horwitz had a run in with a few hardcore
reenactors, he decided to go on a trip and see the different parts of the
Civil War, as he called it a, hardcore campaign (Horwitz, 16). He met
many people from many backgrounds and beliefs about the war. His

first notable encounter with Southern sympathizers came in the form of

the Curtises, a couple from the South. The reason they were so
interested in Civil War history was due to the wife Sues, curiosity
about her rebel ancestry (32). The couple explains that many people
became initially interested in Confederate history due to genealogy like
her, back in the seventies. There are two other particularly notable
people Horwitz met on his journey. The first was a man who had
visited all of General Lees campaign locations except for the end at
Appomattox, because his family had been Confederates all the way
down the line and they did not like to think about how the
Confederates lost. The second was a man who felt a personal
connection to Otto Flickner, a Union deserter, because like Otto, he too
had fled from the German navy after witnessing its horrors. Horwitzs
tale is very intriguing, because the people he meets have various
mindsets about the war that they forged from their own experiences.
They have an interest in the war, and do not blindly follow the normal
depictions of the North and South as set forth by Hollywood. Through
their connections, these people learn about and remember the war as
it was, without the moral fluffing that Hollywood gives it. But this type
of person is clearly not the norm; otherwise the big budget movies
would be more like Horwitzs book, as they attempt to appeal to the
world as entertainment for a profit.

Now it is important to discuss how accurately the movies

portrayed the Civil War. Let me begin by asking, what do Lincoln and
Glory both have in common? They both portray the North as an
equality-loving nation that wishes for nothing more than to free the
slaves. Their incongruities lie in this similarity. In Glory the entire
point of the movie is getting all Americans from the North and South to
accept African Americans, and while some are hesitant at first, by the
end of the movie it is portrayed that most Northern people happily
accept them. There is a specific soldier who changes his allegiance
somewhere in the short timeframe of the movie from racist soldier who
fights Private Tripp, to friendly soldier who shouts Give em Hell as
the black troops march off to battle. These are completely unrealistic
portrayals, as future history tells us that America was racist even all
the way up through the Civil Rights era. On the other hand, Glory does
a decent job factually regarding names of locations and people. Its
inaccuracy comes from the made-up situations concocted to provoke
the audiences emotions, and to convince the audience that the North
were the good guys.
On the other hand, Lincoln is fairly accurate because at the point
in time it is set in, Lincoln was trying to ratify the amendment to end
slavery. But the film is almost using a Civil War recollection for
entertainment loophole. Lincoln always put the Union first, however
the movies timeframe makes it seem like the war was for this ultimate

goal of emancipation, because it only shows Lincoln at the end of the

war. The main focus of the movie is not on the war at hand; it is on the
race to free the slaves before the war can end. So once again,
Hollywood is portraying the North as an anti-slavery, anti-racism group
that wanted freedom for all men, by this time keeping more accuracy
and simply cutting out the first portion of the war, where abolition was
not the main focus.
While the accuracies may be slightly different, the memory of the
Civil War that the each of the movies tries to express is very similar.
The movies mainly focus on the exciting parts of the war: the fighting,
the nation-wide law changing, and the breaking of traditions. The
movies are designed to give the people what they want. People want
to see how this noble Northern group is fighting to change the nation
for the better. The Northerners are the gallant heroes in these films.
In fact, in both films, we hardly even see the South, and when we do it
is only on the other side of the battlefield killing the protagonists we
grew to love, or to surrender with a disgusted glare at Appomattox
Courthouse. In cutting out the South, the movies skip over an entire
half of the war. The Confederates are of course portrayed as evil,
because the movies do not even explain their side of the war. There is
no mention of any of the beliefs of the Lost Cause. No Southerner
was seen as a gentle master or a romantic chivalrous family
man (Trainor, 9 April 2015), they were just deemed wrong, and the

antagonists of the plot. In fact after growing to love both the soldiers
and Lincoln, to see them all be killed at the end of their respective
movies is heartbreaking, and only makes the viewer despise the South
even more. This contrast is then again heightened by the
aforementioned inaccuracy in acceptance of the African American race.
The North is depicted as not only saving the slaves, but also being
genuinely fair to them. That is the way that America wishes to
remember the Civil War, nobody wants to look to the past and
remember that the people were all pretty racist, because we now know
how wrong racism is. So the movies will not put forth that kind of
memory, the movies only give the people what they want; the Union
Triumphalism of the North, and the heroes.
In comparison to the movies, the memory and accuracy of
Confederates in the Attic is another story. As Horwitz says, Id always
focused on the grim and glorious history of battle (Horwitz, 21),
Horwitz does not have the need to please like Hollywood does, and is
able to give the reader true information, not just the interpretation
most people want to hear. He is able to discuss the properties of the
Lost Cause, and give the reader a Southern sympathizers
perspective. While he could have lied or exaggerated about his
interactions with other people regarding the Civil War, most of what he
says about the war itself is factually based. In that sense it is hard to
judge accuracy of the book, since there is no true way to tell if he lied,

although it would not really matter if he did. The point is that Horwitz
explained the viewpoints of many people, and how some people can
feel a connection to either the North or the South. Finally there is a
source of Confederate sympathy, and not just another repeated
portrayal of the South as the army of the devil. Confederates in the
Attic was about how people make personal connections to the war, and
they relive it today in all its glory and its strife. The problem is that not
everybody wants to hear about the strife, most people are ashamed of
it, and just want to hear about the glories and the honors of what the
North fought for. So even though Confederates in the Attic is the least
prejudiced representation of the war, it is not the best representation.
In my opinion, the Civil War is best remembered via the dramatic
and slightly fabricated depictions of Hollywood and the media, because
that is how people want to remember the war. For if people do not
want to remember the war, then they will not remember it at all. My
basis for this belief has grounds in all three sources. In Confederates
in the Attic at the beginning of chapter three, Horwitz makes an
interesting observation. As a man tells his wife about the historical
value of Fort Sumter, the first battleground of the Civil War, the mans
wife, nodded with the trance-like glaze of a teenager in first-period
history class (Horwitz, 45). Just three pages later, while Horwitz is
touring the grounds he hears people shouting, Fin! Quick, get the
camcorder! as a few dolphins appeared in the water surrounding the

Fort. Here all of these people are, standing in the birthplace of the Civil
War, and they are more excited by dolphins. What I believe this says
about modern humans is that most people do not care about the
immutable past. Most people want action, they want emotions, they
want stimuli right now; they do not want to peer into the past and all
its predestined, boring stories. This explains why the movies Glory
and Lincoln would sensationalize the war (and act under the ideology
of Union Triumphalism, so that the audience has a person or group to
act as heroic protagonists fighting for a good cause). While both
movies try to maintain their historic roots, it is obvious that a lot of
what occurred is fictional and heightened emotionally. The intense
fighting and non-diegetic, awe-inspiring orchestral music in Glory, as
well as the increased emphasis on the 13th amendment and African
equality in Lincoln all serve to portray how important and
astounding the war was. That is what people want to see, the big
events being performed by the heroes. The box office certainly agrees
with this, seeing as both Lincoln and Glory were successes, making
$182,207,973 and $26,828,365 respectively (Box Office Mojo). The
audience does not care if the entertainment is fictionalized, what they
care about is the catharsis that they receive from its viewing. In
Confederates in the Attic, the dolphins demonstrate all this. Dolphins
splashing and playing is arguably more exciting than staring at brick
walls, even if the brick walls hold stories of the most deadly war in

America. So as long as we keep illustrating the war as dramatic and

fantastical through the media, the memory of the war will not fade
away into the dusty crevices of our history books.
Since the best way to remember the Civil War is to make it
exciting even at the cost of authenticity, I believe the source that
commemorates the Civil War most effectively is Glory. It has all of the
exciting battles and still portrays a little bit of the reality of the war,
through the other black regiments actions as well as the trials and
tribulations that the regiment must go through just to participate in the
fighting. These events all show a short glimpse into the hard truth of
what was happening in the war. But before the reality of the war
depresses the viewer, it pulls him or her back out of that grimness and
declares that in the end racism was conquered. The men got to join
the fighting, and even that racist white soldier ended up cheering them
on. This is the happy ending that people want to see, according to
Glory the 54th regiment and the North ended racism; the good guys
saved the day. But more importantly than the happy ending (which
ultimately gets turned around anyway when everyone dies), Glory has
action. People want to have their blood pumping and to root for their
heroes in battle, and Glory certainly delivers on that front. I feel as
though Glory is a happy medium for history buffs that get to see the
glimpses of realism, and the masses that get to see a movie about
fighting for freedom with breathtaking action sequences.

In summation, we remember the Civil War today as a glorious

effort by the noble North to end the injustice of slavery. While this is
not the whole story, it is at least a story, and one that people still care
about to this day. If we take away all the falsehoods and insist that
people learn the full truth about the Civil War, less people will revere
its realism; there was no good or bad, only two different parties
vying for control of a nation. What the masses want to remember is a
fight for common good, a war that needed to happen to save this
country. The memory of the most violent military campaign on
Americas home soil must not be forgotten, so if people want it in their
hearts to see it as a battle of good and evil, so be it. The people who
care about it most, like Mr. Horwitz will always preserve the minor
details of the real war. An exaggerated war is still a war, and this way
the Civil War will never be forgotten.

Additional Citations:
"Box Office Mojo." Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.boxofficemojo.com/>.