Opening a New Chapter for Civil War Enthusiasts

Though the sound of gunfire and the roar of the cannons ceased more than 133 years ago, interest in the Civil War has never quieted down.

In fact, the story of the tragic conflict between the states seems more popular than ever this decade, thanks to Ken Burns’ landmark PBS documentary “The Civil War,” the acclaimed feature “Gettysburg,” which was based on Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Killer Angels,” and cable documentary series such as A&E;’s “Civil War Journal.”

Now Craig Haffner, president of Greystone Communications, a production company that supplies original programming for A&E; “Gettysburg” writer-director Ron Maxwell; and Jeff Shaara, Michael’s son and a Civil War author himself, have banded together to form HMS, a company that plans to produce movies, documentaries and TV series on the Civil War and other chapters in American history.

HMS’ first production, “The Film Maker’s Gettysburg,” is set for release on video Monday at the Greystone History Emporium in Gettysburg, Pa. The documentary, commemorating the 135th anniversary of the bloody battle, is also available at the Greystone Web site (https://www.greystoneonline.com). The four-volume video, priced at $64.95, will roll out nationally in August.

The formation of HMS and release of the Gettysburg video underscore a renewed interest in history among Americans. Fueled by cable channels such as A&E; and the History Channel, historical documentaries have found a growing niche market.

Michael Cascio, senior vice president of programming for A&E;, says that there is more demand these days for historical documentaries and biographies. “The media is feeding the public’s appetite,” he says.

“What is the baby boom generation [about]? Self-analysis. That involves looking back and looking at history and what makes you the way you are and what makes other people the way they are.”

Haffner, the Emmy Award-winning producer of “Civil War Journal,” says it was a mutual passion for that war that convinced the trio to create HMS.

The purpose of HMS, he says, is to “draw the focus of the people who know [our work] . . . under one banner,” Haffner says. “We are going to first focus on the mutual love of the Civil War and then we will spread it out to other great American stories.”

“The Film Maker’s Gettysburg” focuses on several stories: the officers of the Union and Confederate armies who fought in the bloody battle, which took place in the small Pennsylvania town July 1-3, 1863; the Irish who fought on both sides; and a biography of Michael Shaara, who won the Pulitzer for “Killer Angels” in 1975 and died in 1988, five years before the release of “Gettysburg” and the renewed interest in his novel.

Haffner believes some people have a nearly insatiable appetite for the Civil War because “the rhetoric over the issues that started it have not stopped. The war, in many respects, is still being fought. I think those issues still smolder.”

Nostalgia, he says, is another factor. “As we hit the end of the decade and the end of the century and the end of the millennium here, I think, there is a lot of attention to who we are.”

Civil War author Jeff Shaara has found a receptive audience for his books “Gods and Generals” and “The Last Full Measure,” which are the prequel and sequel to his father’s landmark work.

Shaara, 46, who first visited Gettysburg with his father as a youngster, maintains people are hungry for heroes. “My books and my father’s book--they are not history books,” Shaara says. “It is a story of the people. . . . They are not superhuman. They are not mythical. They are just like us.

“Even the most famous names you can think of, like Lee and Grant, these are ordinary people who are doing a job in a fairly mundane situation and, suddenly, the country collapses. But they rise to the occasion and become heroic figures. They rise to the occasion, not only with heroism but with dignity and honor. I think we miss that.”

Baby boomers, Shaara says, were turned off from history for a long time. “It wasn’t cool,” he says. “Now, I think Ken Burns went a long way to reopening that door and let us look back at these figures and realize these are fascinating people. They are us. This is where we came from.”

Gettysburg, Shaara says, holds a particular fascination among Civil War aficionados. Nearly 50,000 soldiers died in the battle that was the turning point of the Civil War. “The one thing that affected my father was the ground,” Shaara recalls.

“If you go to Gettysburg, it’s all there. You can look at the ground and you can see it exactly the way it was. You can stand where [Confederate Gen. George] Pickett brought his troops up to the Union line and where Confederate Gen. Lewis A. Armistead fell. . . . You can imagine what it was like.”

Retracing his father’s steps at Gettysburg for the documentary was an intense experience for Shaara. “I’ve been to Gettysburg a lot,” he says.

“But I’ve never been back with the idea of going to the exact spot where my father and I went when I was a kid, where he would get emotional telling me the stories. That was his way of getting involved in the story. He would tell the story before he wrote it. I can remember him standing next to the Armistead monument and crying. Well, to go back to these places and remember these sites--there were some difficult times in the shoot.”

Shaara, who lives in Missoula, Mont., reports that more and more children are becoming intrigued with the Civil War. “I just did a book-signing last night and there were kids in the audience who were no older than 10 who had questions. I have been at Gettysburg for the last several years and every time I go, I see parents with children. What I see is that the kids aren’t being dragged by the collar. They are there because they want to be there.”

It’s a personal mission for Haffner, Shaara and Maxwell to make history accessible to the public.

“I meet so many people who had a terrible experience [in school] as they grew up with history,” Haffner says. “They say they were forced to memorize a bunch of dates. That isn’t what history is about.

“The best and only crystal ball I know about is that by looking at these stories of how people handled themselves in situations in the past, it is about the closest thing we have got to deciding what we can expect in the future.”