Gods and generals series#

Fifteen years earlier and his tactics would have been just fine given his superior numbers and better artillery.

Gods and generals series#

Unfortunately it's Truth in Television: Burnside's tactics at Fredericksburg really were little more than a series of Zerg Rushes against a fortified position. Obviously this works out in the Confederacy's favor. Hollywood Tactics: Fredericksburg has a scene where Union troops repeatedly advance across an open field towards the Confederate troops, who are crouching behind a stone wall.The film also leaves out his Bunny-Ears Lawyer tendencies, like the fact he kept one hand raised at most times to 'keep the blood balanced' and was known to sometimes refuse to fight on a Sunday, considering it a sin.

Also in real life, Jackson's cook was not a freeman as in the movie, but a slave. The first Confederate general to suggest freeing slaves in order to have them fight against the Yankees was Patrick Cleburne, 'the Stonewall of the West', in early 1864, which was a year after Jackson died. He did get in trouble for teaching Sunday School lessons to slave children, with his defense that 'The Lord intended all his children to be able to read his word', but he still believed they could read it fine while remaining in slavery.

Historical Hero Upgrade: Jackson is portrayed as favoring an eventual abolition of slavery in the South, for which there is no historical evidence - he figured that if God wanted it to end then it would end in God's time, and if God didn't want it to end then it wouldn't.

But he can be a Bad Boss at times, such as when he threatens to bayonet any stragglers during his famous flanking march to Chancellorsville.

Does This Remind You of Anything?: Stonewall Jackson, on his deathbed, is a bearded man raising his right hand as if in blessing, a bloodstain at the center of his bandaged palm.

In the movie, even in the director's cut he only gets a few scenes, and no real character development to speak of. In the book, while he got slightly less mention than Lee, Chamberlain, or Jackson, all 4 were approximately equal main characters. We, who are about to die, salute you.' His senior NCO repeats the line as they approach the firing lines. Before the assault at Fredericksburg, he describes Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon to his regiment, and then speaks of how when Roman gladiators entered the ring, they would salute the Emperor with the line, 'Hail Caesar.

Cultured Warrior: Chamberlain, a college professor, refuses to quote Lovelace's 'To Lucasta' to his wife before he goes off to war, so she quotes it to him.

Then Chamberlain (historically from a family of abolitionists) monologues to his sergeant that if the South merely believed the Federal Government had overstepped its authority and restricted their rights, he would disagree but wouldn't question their integrity, but since they complain about their rights being oppressed while simultaneously denying those same rights to others, he considers the Southern cause to be hypocrisy and believes this shows the North has just reasons to prosecute the war and end the rebellion.

who don't care much for slavery and are decent human beings who, from their point of view, just want to be left alone. At this point in the film we've mostly gotten to see Confederate characters from a Sympathetic P.O.V.

Character Filibuster: Several, but mostly notably one by Chamberlain on the reason he believes in the Union cause.