User Reviews

War dramas are becoming popular and the latest from the Selig studio has much to commend it, both from a scenic and dramatic standpoint. The picture opens in a country village store in Kentucky and shows two brothers taking opposite sides in the conflict. Then follow numerous scenes of riding, battles and other war action, all of which are good and are reproduced with considerable fidelity to fact. One of the brothers, the Confederate, is chosen to go through the Union lines with a verbal message. He is captured and the colonel before whom he is taken proves to be his own brother. The spy is sentenced to death at sunrise and is imprisoned in the guardhouse. The brother enters and assists him to escape by exchanging coats and hats with him. A few weeks later the Confederate brother is killed in a charge on a bridge and dies in the Union man's arms. The closing scene is the same store with the widow and the child, and such of the villagers as happen to be present, listening to the story of the death of the Confederate. The battle scenes are realistic and the staging is liberal enough to make them seem actual conflicts, which is more than can be said of all attempts of this sort. The uniforming and other accessories seem to be as true to actual facts as they can be made now. Perhaps the most striking feature of the film is the picture of the sorrow of the women when the men departed for the war and the somber costuming after it closed which tell graphically the result of the strife. Sometimes it is well to stop and think and this picture will make one do it. - The Moving Picture World, April 17, 1909