Please answer the following question: Build a movie plot around this: In what era is the second half of the film set? The Reconstruction Era
Answer:
Part 1: Civil War of United States[edit]The film follows two juxtaposed families. One is the Northern Stonemans: abolitionist U.S. Representative Austin Stoneman (based on the Reconstruction-era Representative Thaddeus Stevens[14][15]), his two sons, and his daughter Elsie. The other is the Southern Camerons: Dr. Cameron, his wife, their two daughters, and three sons.The Stoneman brothers visit the Cameron estate in South Carolina, representing the Old South. Phil, the elder Stoneman son, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, while young Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War begins, these young men enlist in their respective armies.Black militiamen under a white leader ransack the Cameron house; the Cameron women are rescued by Confederate soldiers who rout the militia. Meanwhile, the younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in the war. Ben Cameron leads a heroic charge at the Siege of Petersburg, earning the nickname of "the Little Colonel". But he is also wounded and captured, and is taken to a Union hospital in Washington, D.C. There he meets Elsie Stoneman, whose picture he has been carrying; she is working there as a nurse. While recovering, Cameron is told that he will be hanged for being a Confederate guerrilla. Elsie takes Cameron's mother, who had traveled to Washington to tend her son, to see Abraham Lincoln, and Mrs. Cameron persuades the President to pardon Ben.When Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, his conciliatory postwar policy expires with him. In the wake of the president's death, Austin Stoneman and his fellow Radical Republicans are determined to punish the South, employing harsh measures that Griffith depicts as having been typical of the Reconstruction era.[16]Part 2: Reconstruction[edit]Stoneman and his protege Silas Lynch, a mulatto exhibiting psychopathic characteristics,[17] travel to South Carolina to observe the implementation of Reconstruction policies firsthand. Black occupation soldiers are seen parading through...