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Civil War documentary tells Georgia’s story
Chris Wheeler’s document about the Civil War in Georgia and the Western Theater will be airing in April. Wheeler filmed many of the scenes on battlefields in Georgia, including Resaca and Chickamauga.
CHRIS WHEELER AT A GLANCE
An award-winning producer, director and photojournalist, Chris Wheeler is the creative vision behind Great Divide Pictures in Denver. He has produced and directed more than 25 visitor center films for the National Park Service. He produced the documentary “Warriors” for the History Channel, as well as “Our Time in Hell: the Korean War,” “Godspeed John Glenn” narrated by Walter Cronkite, and “How the West Was Lost” for the Discovery Channel.
TV PREVIEW
The first three episodes of “Civil War: the Untold Story” will air beginning at 2 p.m. April 13 on GPB. On April 20, the last two episodes will air starting at 2 p.m. Individual episodes will be shown throughout the week, with the schedules subject to change.
A free public screening of the final episode of the series will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Kennesaw State University’s Civil War Center, just a few miles from the site of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Wheeler will attend.
While the battles of Fort Sumter and Gettysburg are often recounted as the start and turning point of the Civil War, the lesser known battles of Kennesaw and Jonesboro just outside of Atlanta in 1864 had great impact too, according to documentary producer Chris Wheeler.
“Strategically, Atlanta was a Union target because it was the most important transportation center in the Deep South. Four crucial railroads bisected Atlanta, bringing supplies to not only Confederate armies in the Deep South, but also supplies to Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Georgia was important because it was important to destroy the Confederacy’s means of making war,” Wheeler said.
For Wheeler, the Atlanta campaign came at a critical time. The battles for Atlanta were fought as Lincoln’s bid for reelection was being challenged by Democratic nominee George McClellan. Against a prolonged war, northern voters began to fear defeat. It wasn’t until the pivotal fall of Atlanta in the summer 1864 that northern voters regained confidence in winning the war and public opinion shifted Lincoln into the presidency.
“Had Lincoln not been reelected, the America we know today would have been vastly different. The Emancipation Proclamation would have most likely been struck down as unconstitutional. So slavery would have continued,” he said.
Wheeler’s new five-part documentary series titled “Civil War: the Story Untold” commemorates the 150th anniversary of the 1864 Atlanta campaign. It depicts consequential battles in Georgia that broke the South’s back and led to the end of the war.
“Atlanta was really ground zero of the Civil War and the battles there determined the final outcome of the war,” Wheeler said.
The documentary is scheduled to premiere in April on Georgia Public Broadcasting and Public Broadcasting Atlanta. A preliminary screening of the final episode of this five-part series will be held Tuesday at Kennesaw State University’s Civil War Center, just a few miles from the historic battleground of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Wheeler will attend.
Wheeler’s documentary sheds light on the overshadowed stories of the Civil War battles in and around Atlanta. Narrated by Elizabeth McGovern of “Downton Abbey,” the film takes an advanced approach to cinematic storytelling.
“Instead of relying on archival photographs, we recreated the battle and we used Civil War re-enactors,” said Wheeler.
Smoke machines and special effects were used during the filmed battle scenes. Most of the filming took place on the battlefield at Resaca just off I-75 in North Georgia. However, the Battle of Chickamauga scenes were filmed on the battleground in Chickamauga.
“We were able to recreate the battles on the very grounds where blood was spilt. There is a great power on those grounds,” Wheeler said, “There would be these brief glimpses of time where it seemed very real and we tried to capture these moments in the film.”
The series takes the viewer on a journey from the first episode, “Bloody Shiloh,” which was also filmed on the 1862 battleground in Tennessee, where losses on both sides totaled 23,000 in two days of fighting. It moves to the final episode, “With Malice Toward None,” which takes place throughout Georgia, and ultimately brought an end to the Civil War. Wheeler describes his documentary as giving context to last year’s film “Lincoln,” which was directed by Steven Spielberg.
It took five years for Wheeler to complete this series. Through extensive research and interviews with historians he was able to turn his passion into reality. He began to see there was a bigger story than just the Civil War. There was an importance in the reelection of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, an importance that would soon free those 3.9 million people enslaved during the Civil War.
Wheeler realizes that many of the same issues still exist.
“The battles have stopped but many of the same issues that are part of our national conversation today are issues that are rooted in the Civil War and are still unresolved. Civil rights, race, the Constitution, so many things we continue to struggle with as a nation today,” Wheeler said.
“The end of the Civil War isn’t the end of the story. In many ways, it’s just the beginning.”
-- Contact Elizabeth Montgomery at: elizabeth.montgomery@ajc.com
