christov4

This is really shocking to see that this sort of propoganda was still made in 1940. It's impossible to enjoy this film "historical accuracy aside," because it's so obviously pro-slavery. The fact is we are not talking about whether the Winchester repeating rifle was really invented by 1850. The abolitionists are painted as violent, crazy, murderous people, "the reason why Kansas is called Bloody Kansas." Anyone who knows anything about this tragic period knows that pro-slavery forces were first to engage in murder and pillage. John Brown was notable because he was the first free-stater who started murdering back, and he made a campaign of it. After that, wholesale murder was found on both sides. THAT is why they called it "Bloody Kansas." What we see in the movie, however, is only John Brown's violence, time after time. We also see simple-minded black folks who would have been better off if John Brown hadn't made them free and responsible for feeding themselves. You can try and enjoy the story for itself, but the ugly and badly slanted arguments against abolitionists (and by extension against any reform of Jim Crow Laws in the 1940s) make it appalling viewing.