Civil War: The Santa Fe Trail 1

I reached down into my bag of tricks for videos to excite the 8th graders into learning about the Civil War. I chose Gettysburg over the Burn's documentary, thinking Burns would be too slow moving. Gettysburg was too slow too-at least in the beginning. I should have started with the 1940 pre-Civil war tale of the Cavalry vs. John Brown. Wildly inaccurate with John Brown portrayed as the heavy, instead of savior. Lots of grist for the mill in terms of the filmakers' point of view. In learning about the film I found out that Lincoln's son Todd heard Raymond Massey (who played Brown and Abraham Lincoln in several films) speak in the 1920's and said his voice was similar to his father's. In this scene, Robert E. Lee leads the Federal troops
against John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Flynn plays JEB Stuart, Reagan plays George Custer.