The first I heard of Ronald Maxwell’s epic movie, Gods and Generals, was the pre-movie slide show at the Century Riverside 12 theater in Reno, Nevada. Billed as the prequel to Gettysburg, the movie appeared only in a few theaters several months later. I had enjoyed Gettysburg and was willing to spend the time and money watching the prequel.
The movie begins prior to Lincoln’s election. Robert Duvall plays Robert E. Lee and appeared first. Jeff Daniels reprised his role as Joshua Chamberlain. Gods and Generals is centered on Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, played by Stephen Lang. The latter role was the most complex in the movie, and Stephen Lang did an excellent job of bringing the legend to life. The Civil War was a religious war, a tribal war, and economic war—and men on both sides of the Mason Dixon Line were so devoutly religious that today’s Taliban fighters seem secular in comparison. Today’s American audience is intolerant of religious fanatics—yet that was the norm for America of the 1860’s.
Few men of the period were as openly religious as Thomas Jackson. Praying twelve times a day wasn’t unusual for him. I think that Ronald Maxwell managed the difficult feat of balancing historic accuracy with the tolerance of modern American audiences on the religious issue. The slavery issue was downplayed considerably—Jackson’s slave, cook, and batman was not obviously a slave. This may anger many of today’s fanatics, but for the South, slavery was the norm and not a “big deal—“ if you want to see the world through another’s eyes, you’ll just have to learn to think like another. One thing I learned while watching the movie was that General Jackson and General Grant belonged to the same fashion school—sloppy. Unlike Custer and J.E.B. Stuart, Jackson was not a fancy dresser—this is brought out by the gift of a uniform by Stuart to Jackson. The movie accurately portrays a frayed and soiled General Jackson leading his troops to victory.
Thomas Jackson was not just a military leader. Introduced in the movie as an ineffective teacher, Professor “Tom Fool” Jackson is depicted in a classroom that wouldn’t be that far out of place in a teen movie. Muttering Spanish endearments to his latest wife, sucking lemons as he briskly walked between home and work, counseling a student from a Northern state to resign and return home, the image is complex and contradictory—Maxwell’s Jackson is no cardboard character! The movie ends with Jackson’s death from pneumonia, as a brooding Robert E. Lee leads his starving army north towards Gettysburg and defeat.
The battle scenes were possible only due to the large numbers of Civil War reenactors. Period battles resembled riots as bands of uniformed men lined up in neat ranks outside the effective range of weapons fire, then marched over broken terrain, encountered flying metal, and disintegrated into mobs. Close-packed ranks were the rule of the period, which is lambasted in modern, radio-coordinated maneuver times. Against smooth-bore muskets and cannon lacking adequate fire control, this close-order battle drill concentrated maximum combat power and offered at least the illusion of control The smooth bore musket was effective to about 50 meters on point targets and 200 meters against area targets in the hands of a trained soldier. The rifled musket, typlified by the 1855 Springfield “Mississippi Rifle,” even though muzzle loading, was able to hit a point target at 400 meters and could inflict damage on an advancing enemy regiment in excess of 1500 meters under ideal conditions.
At quick time, an American soldier covers 100 yards in one minute. A skilled soldier can reload and fire a muzzle-loading rifled musket 4 times in that one minute. Suddenly, the battlefield was a much more deadly place. Given the crude medical treatment of the era, it is a wonder that the miss-match between weaponry and tactics didn’t result in total annihilation of the combatants! I haven’t even mentioned the effect of improved artillery fire. Fire control was still crude—field artillery was mostly direct fire at the time. Cannister had an effective range of about 350 meters—solid shot could reach out past the two-mile mark in the 12 pounder. Civil War artillery featured the dreaded Shrapnell round, a canister round with the range of solid shot, fused to explode at extended ranges and shower musket balls on an enemy’s head.
In the old days, only mortars and howitzers fired exploding shells—Civil War field guns could fire exploding shells as well. Some Civil War field guns were rifled and breech loading. Given better fire control, even without the recoil mechanisms of the Great War field artillery, these Civil War cannon could have reached beyond the horizon and killed well beyond visual range. Even so, the effective range of rifle and artillery fire devastated densely-packed ranks. The resulting chaos was “controlled” by shouting “Rally round the flag, boys,” and presenting a denser mass for artillery and riflemen. The artillery parks of the Civil War suffered along with the poor bloody infantry—the Springfield and Confederate Enfield rifles proved to be effective counter-battery fire due to reach. Instead of encountering few casualties from long-range solid shot and being able to close within a quick 10-second bayonet charge of enemy positions before having one’s regiment shot to pieces, the Civil War regiment suffered significant casualties from artillery and massed rifle fires before getting to within a quarter mile of the enemy positions.
At the quarter-mile mark, the massed rifle fire and canister from cannon could sweep a full-strength regiment of 1000 men from the field in far less than the three to five minutes that the overloaded infantry soldier needed to close the gap. For cavalry, mounted on horseback and presenting four times the target area of a standing man, the improved firepower reduced them to scouting and skirmishing. Attacking even hastily dug-in infantry that lacked fire support was too suicidal for the horse soldier. And I haven’t even factored in the few units equipped with breechloaders or repeating rifles! “Gods and Generals” graphically shows these effects in the screen battle of Fredericksburg. The Union dithering and political horseplay leading up to the abattoir at Fredericksburg and the frantic Confederate development of an in-depth defense is well-played. What was missing was emphasis on the media role in the Union conduct of the battle—it was only hinted at.
The battle began with the Union forces waiting on the banks of the Rappahannock in winter weather, trading occasional shots and foodstuffs with the Confederate forces. The initial amphibious assault was delayed by the slow-moving bridging units and bad roads—but when the pontoon bridges arrived, Hell broke out. The movie showed how cold and enemy fire raked the Union forces as they leaped the river and stormed the town—very difficult maneuvers even with modern equipment against light enemy opposition. The house-to-house fighting was only the beginning as follow-on Union forces marched across cleared killing fields and into the muzzles of dug-in Confederate guns. Accurately depicting piles of dead, wounded, dying, and surviving Union soldiers waiting out the cold, cold night after being dashed to the ground, “Gods and Generals” makes the Union advance seem pointless as well as foolhardy. Lee considered Fredericksburg a missed opportunity—despite the heavy Federal casualties, the Union invaded Virginia still. This lead to another battle that left Stonewall Jackson wounded and dying: Chancellorsville.
Exploiting local knowledge of the terrain, Jackson flanked the Union forces and slammed through the Federal right flank. The Federal units Jackson attacked were placed at the far end of the battle because the new immigrant German soldiers were barely trained and almost ineffective. Caught by surprise, these Federal units predictably shattered and stampeded through adjacent Union regiments and brigades. It was a case of the routed units outrunning their pursuit. The Confederate forces were understandably weary after two years of hard campaigning and an all-day forced march, and the Orange Turnpike was punched through dense forest—not the best conditions for rapid full-strength pursuit. Jackson kicked off his assault at 5:30 that evening and when darkness fell, urged his men to keep up the momentum. Night combat in the Civil War was groping in the dark. No communications. “Accurate map” was a contradiction. “Night vision device” meant a torch, an oil lantern, or a bonfire. Jackson deemed it more important to keep the Union forces off-balance. He lost the gamble. At around 9 o’clock Jackson’s party was fired upon by what is thought to have been Confederate forces. American troops are famously trigger happy—especially when keyed up and in the dark. It may have been crossfire from several scattered units, both Confederate and Union, when they heard horses. The 18th North Carolina is known to have fired upon Jackson’s command group—“Gods and Generals” recreated the confusion and tragedy of the moment for a modern audience.
Conclusion
“Gods and Generals” isn’t for everyone. It is too pro-Confederacy for the bigot. It is long—necessarily so. War is chaos, confusion, disaster, tragedy, and waste. There are worse things.
I plan to pick up the DVD when “Gods and Generals” is released in that format. Home video is a better format for this movie than the theater due to audience and commercial factors. While not a documentary, “Gods and Generals” will be a valuable addition to any Civil War library.
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© Copyright 2004 by David W. Tschanz.
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