Editing The Birth of a Nation (section)

===New opening titles on re-release===
One famous part of the film was added by Griffith only on the second run of the film<ref>Schickel, Richard (1984). ''D. W. Griffith: An American Life''. New York: Limelight Editions, p. 282.</ref> and is missing from most online versions of the film (presumably taken from first run prints).<ref>This includes the one at the Internet Movie Archive [https://archive.org/details/dw_griffith_birth_of_a_nation] and the Google video copy [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5639233838609252948#] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100813174157/http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5639233838609252948|date=August 13, 2010}} and Veoh [http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/entertainment/watch/v1640308YD8z9qcp Watch Videos Online | The Birth of a Nation | Veoh.com] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100609173838/http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/entertainment/watch/v1640308YD8z9qcp|date=June 9, 2010}}. However, of multiple YouTube copies, one that has the full opening titles is {{YouTube|vPxRIF1c2fI|DW GRIFFITH THE BIRTH OF A NATION PART 1 1915}}</ref>

These are the second and third of three opening title cards that defend the film. The added titles read:<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Birth of a Nation |url=https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/1826 |access-date=May 18, 2025 |website=[[AFI Catalog of Feature Films]]}}</ref>

<blockquote>
A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE:

We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue—the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word—that art to which we owe [[Bible|the Bible]] and the works of [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] and If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain.</blockquote>

Various film historians have expressed a range of views about these titles. To Nicholas Andrew Miller, this shows that "Griffith's greatest achievement in ''The Birth of a Nation'' was that he brought the cinema's capacity for spectacle... under the rein of an outdated, but comfortably literary form of historical narrative. Griffith's models... are not the pioneers of film spectacle... but the giants of literary narrative".<ref>{{cite book |title=Modernism, Ireland and the erotics of memory |last=Miller |first= Nicholas Andrew |year=2002 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-81583-3|page=226}}</ref> On the other hand, S. Kittrell Rushing complains about Griffith's "didactic" title-cards,<ref>{{cite book |title=Memory and myth: the Civil War in fiction and film from Uncle Tom's cabin to Cold mountain |last=Rushing |first=S. Kittrell |year=2007 |publisher=Purdue University Press |isbn=978-1-55753-440-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/memorymythcivilw0000unse/page/307 307] |url=https://archive.org/details/memorymythcivilw0000unse/page/307}}</ref> while Stanley Corkin complains that Griffith "masks his idea of fact in the rhetoric of high art and free expression" and creates a film that "erodes the very ideal" of liberty that he asserts.<ref>{{cite book |title=Realism and the birth of the modern United States:cinema, literature, and culture |last=Corkin |first=Stanley |year=1996 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-1730-4|pages=144–145 }}</ref>