Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #1: The New World (2005)

 

Since this year marks the 250^th birthday of the United States of America, I’ve decided to mix my love of movies and history. Roughly once a week, I’ll watch an American history film, arranging them in rough chronological order (these movies span any period from a few days to a few decades).

First is up is Terence Malick’s  The New World (2005), which covers the early years of the colony at Jamestown. Malik is a deeply philosophical filmmaker, and he is less interested than the history per se than in its personalities. Thus the movie revolves around a trio of characters. There is John Smith (the competent explorer played by Colin Farrell), the quiet planter John Rolfe (Christian Bale), and most importantly Powhatan princess Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher).

As with many previous iterations, most famously Disney’s controversial animated effort, Malick ages up Pocahontas a little so she can have a romance with John Smith. In real life they had an intergenerational child-adult friendship. Most of the inaccuracies in the movie stem from this decision, as it heavily reframes Pocahontas’ character. For example, when she becomes a member of Jamestown she’s listlessly going through life because she believes John Smith is dead. In real life she was actually very interested in her new home and earnestly wanted to become an Englishwoman and a Christian.

The Ironclad Assault on Charleston Part III (April 7-After, 1863)

The sinking of the Keokuk as illustrated in Harper's Weekly

Charleston Stands

It seemed to the Federals that the Confederates were unfazed. This was almost true, and the Charleston defenders had reason to be elated. Losses at Fort Moultrie were paltry. When he took a boat over there, General Ripley learned that the most considerable damage was done to the flagstaff. It had been cut by enemy shot, the top part falling down and crushing a Private Lusby. Lusby soon died from his injury. The Confederates defiantly set their regimental flag on the traverse to replace the one that had fallen. The other casualty at this spot was a gunner, Private Harrison, who accidentally lost a finger while helping push his gun into place.[1]

Indeed, Confederate losses were light, especially in terms of men. An ammunition chest exploded in Battery Wagner, killing 4 men and wounding 4 others. Fort Sumter, which was hit about 55 times, can be said to have had the worst of it. One Columbiad exploded and flew back into the parade grounds, and a rifled 42-pound piece was put out of action not by enemy fire, but by a defective gun carriage that was crushed by the recoil of the gun. Six men, one of them a slave or free black, were hit by debris from shattered brick and wood. Major Echols, one of the engineers, added, “Nearly all the window panes and some of the sashes in the fort were broken by concussion.”[2] Total Confederate losses in manpower mounted to 4 dead and 10 wounded.[3]

The Ironclad Assault on Charleston Part II (April 7, 1863)

 

With Du Pont's attack force of 9 ironclad warships steaming towards the harbor, both sides were ready for the possibility of their success. Confederate war ships were waiting further back in the harbor. The most formidable were the Chicora and Palmetto State, both ironclads. For their part the Union had wooden ships waiting to join once the ironclads had done their part. Neither of these groups would act unless the ironclads made it past Fort Sumter.[1]

Storm in the Harbor

The Confederates knew the ironclads were coming, and they worked on ensuring that their batteries and works were ready for battle. At 2 PM the enemy fleet began to advance up the channel, and the South Carolinians waited expectantly for them to get into range. General Roswell S. Ripley, commanding the defense, had personally gone to Fort Sumter as it was sure to be the epicenter of the battle.[2] Frank Vizetelly, a British journalist, waited like the Confederate defenders, and reported on the appearance of the oncoming ironclads:

There they came, their turrets whirling in a waltz of death. Cautiously they worked their way up the ship channel, and, as I watched their approach through my glass, I could hear the thumping of my heart against my ribs…Every house is pouring out its inmates, eager to witness the engagement: ladies, in almost gala costume, are hastening to the battery promenade, from whence an unobstructed view of the harbor and forts, and of the enemy’s fleet, can be obtained. There is no terror expressed in any of these countenances – all are calm and collected; they are going to witness the bravery of their defenders.[3]

Frank Vizetelly was a traveling British journalist. At the start of the American Civil War he attended the Union Army, but then went South to report from the Confederate side. He grew so like the Confederates so much that he began to label the conflict the more secession-friendly "War Between the States." (https://emergingcivilwar.com/2012/04/04/drawing-the-war-part-3-frank-vizetelly/)

In Fort Sumter, as the defenders assembled for action and the flags were raised, the band struck up “Dixie,” though there’s no record that the Union seamen could hear it. However, they must have heard the 13-gun salute, either a humorous attempt to treat the battle like a gala occasion or a chivalric salute to the enemy.[4]

The Ironclad Assault on Charleston Part I (Leading up to April 7, 1863)

Charleston, South Carolina was the birthplace of the Confederacy. It was there that delegates from across the state successfully voted to secede on December 24, 1860. Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard found himself overseeing the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. This initiated the Civil War and gave the Northern states more reason to despise the city. Beauregard would go on to command at Bull Run and in Western Tennessee, but in September 1862 would return to the city that made him a nationwide name.

Beauregard’s engineering expertise arrived just in time. Surprisingly the Union Navy had made no firm attempt to take the rebellious city, instead seizing other ports. But as 1862 progressed it finally began to tighten its grip, and the Army mounted a failed expedition in July. Still absent was a major naval assault. It would finally come on April 7, 1863. Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, a lifelong sea man who had joined the Navy at age 12 in 1815, would try to force Charleston Harbor with the latest in naval machines, the Jon Ericsson-designed ironclad monitors. Du Pont would pay the price for the hubris and unrealistic expectations of his political superiors.

Mini-Series Review: Death by Lightning (2025)

 

As far as the general public is concerned, one of the most least known parts of American history is what occurred in the eastern part of the nation between the Civil War and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. This is ironic, because the most filmed part of American history is probably the Old West of the same period. So imagine my pleasant surprise when, just a week before its release, I learned there was a four-part Netflix series on President James Garfield and his assassin Charles Guiteau!

James Garfield is one of the most fascinating and over-looked figures in American political history. Born into a poor Ohioan family and raised for most of his childhood and youth by a single mother, He became a voracious reader and was noted for his vast knowledge as an adult. Initially a teacher, he entered politics as a Republican and an Abolitionist. In the Civil War Garfield joined the Union Army and, with quite a bit of good fortune, rose to the rank of brigadier-general before leaving the army to become a US Representative as well as a lawyer. In 1880 he went to the Republican Convention in New York to support John Sherman as presidential candidate, but surprisingly found himself nominated after he gave a rousing speech defending certain delegates from expulsion (the speech is one of the more historically altered moments in the show).

St. Mark's Expedition (March 3-6, 1865)

 Even very late in the Civil War, after the Confederate Army of Tennessee ceased to be a formidable force, all the vital Southern ports had fallen, and William Tecumseh Sherman’s army was ravaging its way north to squash Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia between himself and Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac, fighting still erupted in less prioritized theatres of the war. One such battle occurred in Western Florida, truly a sideshow of the war. A relatively tiny affair, the Battle of Natural Bridge nevertheless has gained attention for being one of the last battles of the war and one of only a mere handful of notable clashes in Florida.

 

Florida’s Little War

Even well into 1865, the war in Florida remained virtually the same. The Union Army, assisted by the navy’s steamships, launched various raids into Confederate Florida. Because Florida was not a priority, there was no attempt at a decisive push and the Confederacy remained alive if somewhat besieged. Occasionally there was a deviation from this pattern and it was soon to occur thanks to two small, but concerning actions.

The Battle of Marianna (September 27, 1864)

 After the disastrous East Florida campaign of early 1864, which culminated in the bloodbath of Olustee, the Civil War in Florida went back to the status quo of raids and specifically for the Federals occupation duties. There was one raid in September, however, that managed to leave a mark on Floridian memory. This raid’s high point was the Battle of Marianna, occurring at a lightly populated yet important location for the Confederate war effort.

A Raiding War

Though spared the larger battles in most other theatres of the war, West Floridian defenders were not in good shape heading into what would be the last year of the war. One Major-General Sam Jones reported, “The health of the whole command in this department has been unusually bad this season. It is believed that it would have been much worse had it not been for the use of quinine as a prophylactic, for the sanitary condition of the troops improved materially after its issue.” While quinine alleviated the diseases endemic to hot and in many places swampy Florida, the men were still severely short of clothes, especially shoes. The requests of Jones and other officers for clothes and other valuable goods went unheeded.[1]

Making matters worse, they were almost at the complete mercy of the Union military, with only strategic disinterest keeping the rebel presence alive in the interior. Fanny Chapman, a resident of Marianna, later wrote that “No part of our coast from Pensacola to Apalachicola was protected, while every bay, bayou, and inlet was blockaded, and the Apalachicola River was open to Federal gunboats at any time.”[2] The commander of the Union Army in West Florida was about to exploit Confederate weakness.

Alexander S. Asboth

Alexander Sandor Asboth was born in Hungary in 1811. He became an engineer for the government, then took part in the 1848 Hungarian revolt against Austrian rule. Like the other revolutions of that year, it failed and Asboth joined thousands of other European liberals in moving to America. Also like the other “Dutch”, he was a fervent supporter of the Union cause and joined the army in 1861.