A forgotten battle is revived on film

Movie shot at re-enactment of Battle of Spotsylvania Court House makes its première.

By LAURA MOYER

Date published: 5/21/2005

By LAURA MOYER

Last year’s re-enactment of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House wasn’t just a fleeting success for its organizers.

The 140th anniversary event was also documented by filmmakers. And last night, some county residents got a first look at “Spotsylvania Courthouse: The Clash of Grant & Lee at the Crossroads.”

About 200 people attended the première at Christ Episcopal Church on Courthouse Road, the general area where the fighting and bloodshed took place in May 1864.

The première was sponsored by Friends of Fredericksburg Area Battlefields, the Central War Preservation Trust and Wide Awake Films, which helped pull off last year’s re-enactment and produced the movie.

The production, about 45 minutes long, makes liberal use of scenes from last year’s re-enactment, held May 7–9 at Belvedere Plantation in Spotsylvania. The weekend drew hundreds of Union and Confederate re-enactors and featured realistic battle scenarios in deep earthworks dug just for the event.

During last night’s screening, several in the crowd murmured with recognition of familiar faces in battle scenes.

Interspersed with the 2004 re-enactment scenes were drawings, maps and photographs that provided historic and geographic context for fighting. A narrator described the circumstances leading to the meeting of Union Gen. U.S. Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at the crossroads, then took the audience on a day-by-day journey through the fighting that spring.

The film shed light on a battle notable for its horror but relatively uncelebrated in recent times.

As the film noted, places such as Shiloh, Antietam and Gettysburg became the sites of monuments after the war. But Spotsylvania Court House, the film’s narrator intoned, “was a battle survivors wanted to forget.”

Several speakers at last night’s event, though, emphasized the need to remember. They emphasized the importance of preserving the land upon which so much blood was shed.

Many of the men and boys who died there left no letters or personal effects, said Mike Stevens, president of the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust.

“The ground is all we have to remember them by,” Stevens said. “New houses are being built in fields where your ancestors fought and fell,” he told the crowd.

The film ends with a message urging viewers to contribute to preservation organizations that are working to protect Spotsylvania battle sites from becoming subdivisions and shopping centers.

The film is being sold for $24.95 at several area stores and online at civilwargoods.com. Last night, Wide Awake Films made an $850 donation, part of the proceeds of prior sales, toward a group that seeks to acquire Myer’s Hill, one site of fierce fighting during the Spotsylvania battle.

To reach LAURA MOYER: 540/374-5417 lmoyer@freelancestar.com

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Date published: 5/21/2005