The show got more strange when one comes to know that this professor is a man "suffering" from immortality and that he was actually the man who had written the diary in 1864. I won't give away any more of the plot in case y'all want to watch it. Meanwhile, it got me thinking...
The show was filmed in 1959. Did what many folks call the "myth of the lost cause" hold so much sway over the writers and producers that it set out to make Sherman look like the devil or was this the more accepted view of that era? For what it is worth I thought Rhett Butler had settled the argument of who started the fires in Atlanta in "Gone With The Wind". Don't ya just love Hollywood?