Wikisource:WikiProject Film/Intertitles from GeoCities/The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation 1
GRIFFITH
FEATURE FILMS
Produced Exclusively by
D. W. Griffith
2 This is the trade mark of the Griffith feature films. All pictures made under the personal direction of D. W. Griffith have the name "Griffith" in the border line, with the initials "DG" at bottom of captions. There is no exception to this rule.
D. W. Griffith [signature]
3 For the characters in the play see the printed programs.
Production under the personal direction of D. W. Griffith.
Story arranged by D. W. Griffith and Frank E. Woods.
Photography--G. W. Bitzer.
4
A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE
MOTION PICTURE
We do not fear censorship, for we have
no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.
5
D. W. GRIFFITH
presents
The Birth of a Nation
Adapted from Thomas Dixon's novel
"The Clansman"
COPYRIGHT 1915
COPYRIGHT 1915 EPOCH PRODUCING DAVID W. GRIFFITH CORPORATION AND CORPORATION THOMAS DIXON
6 If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain.
7 The bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion.
8 The Abolitionists of the Nineteenth Century demanding the freeing of the slaves.
9 In 1860 a great parliamentary leader, whom we will call Austin Stoneman, was rising to power in the National House of representatives.
We find him with his young daughter, Elsie, in her apartments in Washington.
10 Some time later.
Elsie with her brothers at the Stoneman country home in Pennsylvania.
11 In the Southland.
Piedmont, South Carolina, the home of the Camerons, where life runs in a quaintly way that is to be no more.
12 Bennie Cameron, the eldest son.
13 Margaret Cameron, a daughter of the South, trained in the manners of the old school.
14 The mother, and the little pet sister.
15 The kindly master of Cameron Hall.
16 Hostilities.
17 The visit of the Stoneman boys to their Southern friends.
18 Chums-- the younger sons.
North and South.
19 "Where did you
get that hat?"
20 Over the plantation to the cotton fields.
21 By Way of Love Valley.
22 He finds the ideal of his dreams in the picture of Elsie Stoneman, his friend's sister, whom he has never seen.
23 In the slave quarters.
The two-hour interval given for dinner, out of their working day from six till six.
24 The Gathering Storm.
The power of the sovereign states, established when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the individual colonies in 1781, is threatened by the new administration.
25 The Stoneman library in Wash- ington, where his daughter never visits.
Charles Sumner, leader of the Senate, confers with the master of Congress.
26 Lydia Brown,
Stoneman's
housekeeper
27 The mulatto aroused from ambitious dreamings by Sumner's curt orders.
28 The great leader's weakness that is to blight a nation.
29 The visitors called back to their northern home.
The chums promise to meet again.
30 Young Stonemans vows the old vow that his only dreams shall be of her till they meet again.
31 The First Call for 75,000 Vol- unteers. President Lincoln signing the proclamation.
AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE of the President's Executive Office on that occasion, after Nicolay and Hay in "Lincoln, A History"
32 Abraham Lincoln uses the Presidential office for the first time in history to call for volunteers to enforce the rule of the coming nation over the individual states.
33 The Stoneman brothers departing to join their regiment.
34 After the first battle of Bull Run.
Piedmont's farewell ball on the eve of the departure of its quota of troops for the front.
35 Bonfire celebration in the streets.
36 While youth dances the night away, childhood and old age slumber.
37 The first flag of the Confederacy, baptized in glory at Bull Run.
38 Daybreak.
The time set for the troops' departure.
39 The assembly call.
40 Their state flag.
The spirit of the South.
41 A mother's gift to the cause -- three sons off for the war.
42 Elsie on her return to her aunt's home in Washington tells her father of her brothers' leaving for the front.
43 Two and a half years later.
Ben Cameron in the field has a letter from home.
44 News from the front.
Little sister wears her last good dress as a ceremonial to the reading of her brother's letter.
45 Piedmont scarred by the war.
An irregular force of guerillas raids the town.
The first negro regiments of the war were raised in South Carolina.
46 The scalawag white captain influences the negro militia to follow his orders.
47 A company of Confederate state troops informed of the raid.
48 The Confederates to the rescue.
49 After the rescue.
50 Letters from home revive tender reveries for "the little Colonel."
51 On the battlefield.
War claims its bitter, useless sacrifice.
True to their promise, the chums meet again.
52 News of the death of the youngest Cameron.
53 Others also read war's sad page.
54 The last of their dearest possessions to be sold for the failing cause.
55 Elsie Stoneman goes as a nurse in the military hospitals.
56 While the women and children weep, a great conqueror marches to the sea.
57 The torch of war against the breast of Atlanta.
The bombardment and flight.
58 The death of the second Cameron son.
59 The last grey days of the Confederacy.
On the battle lines before Petersburg, parched corn their only rations.
60 A sorely-needed food train of the Confederates is misled on the wrong road and cut off on the other side of the Union lines.
61 General Lee orders an attempt to break through and rescue the food train.
A bombardment and a flanking movement are started to cover the charge.
62 The action before daybreak with artillery duel in distance.
63 "The little Colonel" receives his orders to charge at an appointed moment.
64 The intrenchments of the opposing armies separated by only a few hundred feet.
65 The masked batteries.
66 The field artillery.
67 The mortars.
68 "The little Colonel" leads the final desperate assault against the Union command of Capt. Phil Stoneman.
69 Two lines of intrenchments taken but only a remnant of his regiment remains to continue the advance.
70 All hope gone, "the little Colonel" pauses before the last charge to succor a fallen foe.
71 The Unionists cheer the heroic deed.
72 In the red lane of death others take their places and the battle goes on into the night.
73 War's peace.
74 The North victorious.
75 News of the death of their second son and of the eldest being near death in a Wash- ington hospital.
76 War, the breeder of hate.
77 The woman's part.
78 The "little Colonel" in the military hospital set up in the Patents Office where Elsie Stoneman is a nurse.
79 "Though we had never met, I have carried you about with me for a long, long time."
80 Mother Cameron comes from Piedmont to visit her stricken eldest boy.
81 "I am going into that room to my boy. You may shoot if you want to."
82 The army surgeon tells of a secret influence that has con- demned Col. Cameron to be hanged as a guerilla.
83 "We will ask mercy from the Great Heart."
84 The mother's appeal
85 "Mr. Lincoln has given back your life to me."
86 Her son convalescent, Mrs. Cameron starts back for Piedmont to attend the failing father.
87 Back at home with the good news.
88 Appomattox Courthouse, on the afternoon of April 9, 1865, the sur- render of Gen. Robt. E. Lee, C.S.A., to Gen. U. S. Grant, U.S.A.
AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE of the Wilmer McLean home as on that occasion, and the principals and their staffs, after Col. Horace Porter in "Campaigning with Grant."
89 The end of state sovereignty.
The soul of Daniel Webster calling to America: "Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever."
90 The same day, Col. Cameron is discharged and leaves for home.
91 The feast for the returning brother.
Parched corn and sweet potato coffee.
92 "Southern ermine", from raw cotton, for the grand occasion.
93 The homecoming.
94 The Radical leader's protest against Lincoln's policy of clemency for the South.
95 "Their leaders must be hanged and their states treated as conquered provinces."
96 "I shall deal with them as though they had never been away."
97 The South under Lincoln's fostering hand goes to work to rebuild itself.
98 "And then, when the terrible days were over and a healing time of peace was at hand"......came the fated night of April 14, 1865.
99 To the theatre.
100 A gala performance to celebrate the surrender of Lee, attended by the President and his staff.
The young Stonemans present.
AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE of Ford's theatre as on that night, exact in size and detail, with the recorded incidents, after Nicolay and Hay in "Lincoln, a History"
101 The play: "Our American Cousin," starring Laura Keene.
102 Time, 8:30.
The arrival of the President, Mrs. Lincoln, and party.
103 Mr. Lincoln's personal bodyguard takes his post outside the Presidential box.
104 To get a view of the play, the bodyguard leaves his post.
105 Time, 10:13.
Act III, Scene 2.
106 John Wilkes Booth
107 "Sic semper tyrannis!"
108 Stoneman told of the assassination.
109 "You are now the greatest power in America."
110 The news is received in the South.
111 "Our best friend is gone. What is to become of us now!"
112 End of the first part.
113 The Birth of a Nation
Second Part -- Reconstruction.
The agony which the South endured that a nation might be born.
The blight of war does not end when hostilities cease.
114 This is an historical presentation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Period, and is not meant to reflect on any race or people of today.
115 Excerpts from Woodrow Wilson's "History of the American People":
"..... Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much enemies of the one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile, and use the negroes..... In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences."
116 ".... The policy of the congressional leaders wrought ... a veritable overthrow of civilization in the South ..... in their determination to 'put the white South under the heel of the black South.'"
WOODROW WILSON
117 "The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation ..... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country."
WOODROW WILSON
118 The uncrowned king.
The Executive Mansion of the Nation has shifted from the White House to this strange house on the Capitol Hill.
119 Stoneman's protege, Silas Lynch, mulatto leader of the blacks.
120 "Don't scrape to me. You are the equal of any man here."
121 The great Radical delivers his edict that the blacks shall be raised to full equality with the whites.
122 Senator Sumner calls.
Forced to recognize the mulatto's position.
123 The Senator urges a less dangerous policy in the extension of power to the freed race.
124 "I shall make this man, Silas Lynch, as a symbol of the race, the peer of any white man living.
125 Sowing the Wind.
Stoneman, ill at his daughter's apartments, sends Lynch South to aid the carpetbaggers in organ- izing and wielding the power of the negro vote.
126 Lynch makes Piedmont his headquarters.
127 Starting the ferment.
The black party celebration.
Inducing the negroes to quit work.
128 The Freedman's Bureau.
The negroes getting free supplies.
The charity of a generous North misused to delude the ignorant.
129 "This sidewalk belongs to us as much as it does to you, 'Colonel' Cameron."
130 Stoneman, advised by his physician to seek a milder climate and desiring to see his policies carried out at first hand, leaves for South Carolina.
131 Their arrival in Piedmont.
Influenced by his children he has selected the home town of the Camerons for his sojourn.
132 "Yo' northern low down black trash, don't try no airs on me."
133 "Dem free-niggers f'um de N'of am sho' crazy."
134 Lynch's second meeting with "the little Colonel."
The black's condescension.
135 Lynch a traitor to his white patron and a greater traitor to his own people, whom he plans to lead by an evil way to build himself a throne of vaulting power.
136 The Southern Union League rally before the election.
137 Stoneman the guest of honor.
138 Enrolling the negro vote.
The franchise for all blacks.
139 "Ef I doan' get 'nuf franchise to fill mah bucket, I doan' want it nohow."
140 The love strain is still heard above the land's miserere.
141 The love token.
142 Bitter memories will not allow the poor bruised heart of the South to forget.
143 Still a North and a South.
Pride battles with love for the heart's conquest.
144 "I'll watch you safely home."
145 Love's rhapsodies and love's tears.
146 Election day.
All blacks are given the ballot, while the leading whites are disfranchised.
147 Receiving the returns.
The negroes and carpetbaggers sweep the state.
148 Silas Lynch is elected Lieut. Governor.
149 Celebrating their victory at the polls.
150 Encouraged by Stoneman's radical doctrines, Lynch's love looks high.
151 "The little Colonel" relates a series of outrages that have occurred.
152 "The case was tried before a negro magistrate and the verdict rendered against the whites by the negro jury."
153 Even while he talks, their own faithful family servant is punished for not voting with the Union League and Carpetbaggers.
154 The faithful soul enlists Dr. Cameron's sympathy.
155 The riot in the Master's Hall.
The Negro party in control in the State House of Representatives, 101 blacks against 23 whites, session of 1871.
AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE of the State House of Represent- atives of South Carolina as it was in 1870. After photograph by "The Columbia State"
156 Historic incidents from the first legislative session under Recon- struction.
157 The honorable member for Ulster.
158 The speaker rules that all members must wear shoes.
159 It is moved and carried that all whites must salute negro officers on the streets.
160 The helpless white minority.
161 White visitors in the gallery.
162 Passage of a bill, providing for the intermarriage of blacks and whites.
163 Later.
The grim reaping begins.
164 Gus, the renegade, a product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers.
165 The "little Colonel" orders Gus to keep away.
166 In agony of soul over the degradation and ruin of his people.
167 The inspiration.
168 The result.
The Ku Klux Klan, the organiza- tion that saved the South from the anarchy of black rule, but not without the shedding of more blood than at Gettysburg, according to Judge Tourgee of the carpet-baggers.
169 Their first visit to terrorize a negro disturber and barn burner.
170 Lynch's supporters score first blood against the Ku Klux.
171 The new rebellion of the South.
172 "We shall crush the white South under the heel of the black South."
173 "Your lover belongs to this murderous band of outlaws."
174 The tryst.
Confirmed in her suspicions, in loyalty to her father, she breaks off the engagement.
175 "But you need not fear that I will betray you."
176 Over four hundred thousand Ku Klux costumes made by the women of the South and not one trust betrayed.
177 Little sister consoles the disconsolate lover.
178 Against the brother's warning, she goes alone to the spring.
179 "You see, I'm a Captain now - and I want to marry -"
180 "Wait, missie, I won't hurt yeh."
181 "Stay away or I'll jump!"
182 For her who had learned the stern lesson of honor, we should not grieve that she found sweeter the opal gates of death.
183 And none grieved more than these.
184 The son's plea against his father's radical policy.
185 Gus hides in "white-arm" Joe's ginmill.
186 Townsmen enlisted in the search of the accused Gus, that he may be given a fair trial in the dim halls of the Invisible Empire.
187 The trial.
188 Guilty.
189 On the steps of the Lieut. Governor's house.
The answer to the blacks and carpetbaggers.
190 Morning.
191 Lynch accepts the challenge by ordering negro militia reinforcements to fill the streets.
192 Having embroiled Lynch in the uprising, Stoneman takes his temporary departure to avoid the consequences.
193 The Clans prepare for action.
194 "Brethren, this flag bears the red stain of the life of a Southern woman, a priceless sacrifice on the altar of an outraged civilization.
195 "Here I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men, the fiery cross of old Scotland's hills....... I quench its flames in the sweetest blood that ever stained the sands of Time!"
196 The summons delivered to the Titan of the adjoining county to disarm all blacks that night.
197 Spies dispatched to hunt out whites in possession of the costume of the Ku Klux.
The penalty -- death.
198 Lynch happy at last to wreak vengeance on Cameron House.
199 The bitterness of ideals crushed.
200 The scalawag white Captain, in accordance with the Carpetbaggers' policy, makes the arrest.
201 Appealing to Elsie Stoneman to have her father intervene.
202 The faithful souls take a hand.
203 The master in chains paraded before his former slaves.
204 Hoping to effect a rescue, the faithful souls pretend to join the mockers.
205 "Is I yo' equal, cap'n -- jes like any white man?"
206 Elsie learns her brother has slain a negro in the rescue of Dr. Cameron.
207 Awaiting her father's expected arrival.
208 The social lion of the new aristocracy.
209 The little cabin occupied by two Union veterans becomes their refuge.
210 The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defence of their Aryan birthright.
211 Her father failing to return, and ignorant of Lynch's designs on her, Elsie goes to the mulatto leader for help.
212 Lynch's proposal of marriage.
213 Lynch's reply to her threat of a horsewhipping for his insolence.
214 "See! My people fill the streets. With them I will build a Black Empire and you as a Queen shall sit by my side."
215 Lynch, drunk with wine and power, orders his henchmen to hurry preparations for a forced marriage.
216 Summoning the Clans.
217 "I want to marry a white woman."
218 The Clans being assembled in full strength, ride off on their appointed mission.
219 And meanwhile, other fates---
220 "The lady I want to marry is your daughter."
221 The town given over to crazed negroes brought in by Lynch and Stoneman to overawe the whites.
222 White spies disguised.
223 The Union veterans refuse to allow Dr. Cameron to give himself up.
224 While helpless whites look on.
225 Ku Klux sympathizers victims of the black mobs.
226 News of the danger to the little party in the besieged cabin.
227 Disarming the blacks.
228 Parade of the Clansman.
229 The next election.
230 The aftermath.
At the sea's edge, the double honeymoon.
231 Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more.
But instead - the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace.
232 "Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever!"
233
THE BIRTH OF A NATION
THE END
COPYRIGHT 1915
COPYRIGHT 1915 EPOCH PRODUCING DAVID W. GRIFFITH CORPORATION AND CORPORATION THOMAS DIXON
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