classicsoncall Review of Copperhead

Copperhead (2013)

"...there's the war you read about in the newspaper, and there's the war that really is."

[7/10 · 14 November 2019]

To my recollection, this is the only Civil War movie I've seen to deal with the friction between Northern Union citizens with opposite views of the conflict. 'Copperheads' were Northerners who didn't support Abraham Lincoln's view of going to war to free the slaves. Technically, they WERE opposed to slavery, but were against war for any reason, while upholding a state's right to determine it's status for themselves. Additionally, the Copperheads felt that using force to prevent Southern states from seceding was unconstitutional. It seems kind of conflicted to me, since the idea of states seceding itself sounds unconstitutional, so I had to bring my focus back to those ideas whenever Abner Beech (Billy Campbell) found himself in opposition to his neighbors. Considering this is nominally a Civil War era movie, there's really no battle action at all, the story revolves primarily around the tension between neighbors with a sub-plot involving a romance between Abner Beech's son, Thomas Jefferson (Casey Thomas Brown), and Esther Hagadorn (Lucy Boynton), daughter of the town's firebrand abolitionist leader and supporter of Lincoln's policies. For a brief period, Tom goes missing following the battle of Antietam, having joined the Northern cause in opposition to his father. As the citizens anxiously await word on the fate of other boys who joined the War, Esther agonizes over her fiance's fate, while attempting to reconcile her position with the Beech family as well as her own father. The tenor of the story gives it a Hallmark, made for TV film, with the attendant focus on family values and trying to do the right thing. The film's resolution offers the feel good sensation that comes with Esther's brother Ni (Augustus Prew) admonishing the town folk from the pulpit for their bitterness toward each other. It all ties together rather neatly, except for the fact that at that point in time, the War still had two more years to go, with the same tensions that would have to be dealt with once this story was over.