Poetic license is the art of what might have been, of what could have been. Not a snapshot, it is more like a retrieved memory, an illumination. It is a window opened to reality, not closed to it. When we read Hugo or Tolstoy, we know it is fiction we are reading, not history, but we are convinced of its authenticity, its honesty, its rigorous conception of what might have been, what could have been. Poetic license is not an excuse for sloppiness and slip-shod research, it does not provide authorization to make itall up, to distort or to falsify. Poetic license is not cover for propaganda.It is not a hunting license to kill truth.

Filmmakers, playwrights and novelists, no different than historians, are fiercely preoccupied with the truth - poetic, dramatic and historical truth. When it rings true it is believed. When truth is rendered with artistry, and sometimes genius, it yields War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables, Ninety Three, The Gods Must Have Blood. By these novels we know the French Revolution as well or better than we know it from the historical works of Jules Michelet or Simon Schama.

Audio tapes of conversations between Harriet Beecher Stowe and her brother Henry Ward Beecher are not available. But there are letters and speeches and diaries and novels written by one or the other.  This suggests that their dialogue be derived, inspired and freely created from what they actually thought and wrote, not imposed on them with a sensibility that is not their own. Poetic License demands a recreation of what Harriet and Henry might have said,could have said, within the context of their own times and their own moral universe.

Obviously, this still leaves an immense range of possibilities. Defining and patrolling the border line between what is possible and what isn't, is the responsibility of the artist who enters the realm of historical fiction, or at least, the artist who cares anything at all about the truth of the matter.

The Civil War was a brutal episode in our history. More than a half million were killed or wounded. Tens of thousands were made refugees. The suffering was beyond our reckoning. Individual heroism and courage, duty and honor, only make sense in the context of these trials and tribulations. I have not shied away from either in this screenplay. The last thing the world needs is a mindless, glossy entertainment on the Civil War. None of us wants that, so it is important to accept the seriousness of this challenge: to keep our eyes wide open, to be relentlessly honest, to refrain from perpetuating myth and folklore - to get to the truth of the matter. Nothing will be more dramatic and nothing will be more worthwhile.

Ronald F. Maxwell