Judy --

Many scenes in the film troubled me, the fireside chat including Longstreet, Pickett, Armistead and Kemper being one of them. I also didn't care to hear a badly wounded John B. Hood complain, "We shoulda gone around to the rite...", or the Confederate prisoner explain that we-uns are fightin' for our 'rats'. Seems that Southerners have trouble pronouncing the word 'right' the right way.

Right?

Others who saw the film must have gotten this impression of the Darwin scene. I certainly did. Quoting a reviewer,

I didn't appreciate the plug for Darwin's evolutionary theories, which had no place in this film. However, this is a Turner Pictures film and the "Turner" is outspoken atheist Ted Turner, it's no surprise we get this thrown in our faces.

Unless I'm mistaken, this scene wasn't in the book and must have been written for the movie. Several of the Southern officers -- Kemper for one -- are portrayed as nit-witty hayseeds, the evidence produced in this scene being that Southerners were against evolution and against all progress, really.

Both Robert E. Lee and Joshua L. Chamberlain held strong Christian beliefs, but anyone who saw the film would never have known that these two men had much in common. Martin Sheen as Lee comes off as a somewhat unbalanced religious mystic. On the other hand, Jeff Daniels gives us a very different portrayal of Chamberlain. He's intelligent, pragmatic, sensitive and brave, obviously not someone who would waste time in prayer or seek guidance from scripture.

In my personal opinion, whoever wrote this script introduced any number of socio-political messages concerning the war, its causes and the men involved. What I will label "the Darwin scene" was just one of them.