A Serious Lack of Civil War Films

Lately, I've been reading up on the Civil War. There was a time during High School when I became interested in the Civil War on my own accord (this was an anomaly, as anything unrelated to video games or film never caught my fancy), The Killer Angels being my first real exposure to the subject. I recently finished Battle Cry of Freedom, and am currently reading Ulysses S. Grant's Autobiography and Grant Moves South. So I've developed some sort of foundation to build upon.

My Brother-in-law knows a fair deal about the Civil War, and during a conversation, he brought up the fact that there are few narrative features that deal with the Civil War, let alone any good ones. Glory, I believe, is arguably one of the better films on the subject. Gettysburg has some great performances, but, strangely, completely omits the gritty realism that its story necessitates. A lack of realism (i.e. blood) results in immediate actions without immediate consequences.

Searching for "Why aren't there more Civil War Films?" in Google results in no satisfying explanations, so I guess I'll have to - reluctantly - draw some of my own conclusions. One reason is that the war still lies deep within American consciousness. As much as people like to argue, "The Civil War wasn't really about slavery," this was the single biggest influence that caused the first cannon to fire on Fort Sumter and the wars bloody, drawn out duration. We can all agree that slavery is - and continues to be - one of the worst institutions that humanity conceived. The Emancipation Proclamation swept slavery away, but did not dissolve racial divides between African Americans and Whites. Lincoln and Frederick Douglas recognized this and did what they could to expedite this process as quickly as they could (giving freed blacks free land to cultivate after the war, attempt to bring them suffrage, etc.). Obviously, their actions alone would not cut it, and deep racial divides still exist today. In short, to make a film about the Civil War is to make a film about slavery and thus contemporary racial divides.

There still lies an enormous economic divide between North and South. I'm sure I could find statistics on this, but this is unnecessary - the divide is clear. This was the other big reason that the South decided to secede from the Union. History and time have substantiated this claim. Although this subject is not as difficult to approach as the former, this divide brings up more bad blood that still runs deep on the Mason-Dixon Line.

I remember visiting Gettysburg with my dad and brother as a high school student. I was fascinated with Little Round Top during that time - The Union was the Underdog in that fight, defeating the South in one of the most important confrontations of the war. Without this victory, the Union would have likely dissolved.

I stood in front of the memorial for Joshua Chamberlain, who commanded the victorious regiment, with interested eyes. While wondering how many skin cells were left from the men who fell in this fight under my feet, I happened to look to my right and saw a family - mom, dad, and two children around 9 or 10 - fully clad in Confederate gear: bandannas, t-shirts, shorts, socks, the works. They approached my flank across the ridge and I was left surprised and off guard. I looked at my commanding officer, Dad, who couldn't have cared less. Left with few options, my eyes retreated to the ground. The enemy was at my doorstep, and I refused to even hear their knocks.

And then there were a lack of films on The Civil War.