Editing The Birth of a Nation (section)

===Historical portrayal===
The film remains controversial due to its interpretation of American history. [[University of Houston]] historian [[Steven Mintz]] summarizes its message as follows: "[[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] was an unmitigated disaster, African-Americans could never be [[racial integration|integrated]] into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government".<ref>{{cite web|first=Steven|last=Mintz|url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slaveryfilm.cfm|title= Slavery in film: The Birth of a Nation (1915)|website=Digital History|access-date=November 18, 2018|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051212055821/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slaveryfilm.cfm|archive-date=December 12, 2005 }}</ref> The South is portrayed as a victim. The first overt mentioning of the war is the scene in which Abraham Lincoln signs the call for the first 75,000 volunteers. However, the first aggression in the Civil War, made when the Confederate troops fired on [[Fort Sumter]] in 1861, is not mentioned in the film.<ref>{{harvnb|Stokes|2007|p=184}}.</ref> The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the postwar South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and [[carpetbagger|carpetbagging]] [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] politicians from the North. This is similar to the [[Dunning School]] of historiography which was current in academe at the time.<ref>{{harvnb|Stokes|2007|pp=190–91}}.</ref> The film is slightly less extreme than the books upon which it is based, in which Dixon misrepresented Reconstruction as a nightmarish time when black men ran amok, storming into weddings to rape white women with impunity.<ref name=dixon>{{cite web| last = Leiter| first = Andrew| title = Thomas Dixon, Jr.: Conflicts in History and Literature| publisher = Documenting the American South| date = 2004| url = http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html| access-date = July 21, 2017| url-status = live| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170228142801/http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html| archive-date = February 28, 2017| df = mdy-all}}</ref>

The film portrayed President Abraham Lincoln as a friend of the South and refers to him as "the Great Heart".<ref>{{harvnb|Stokes|2007|p=188}}.</ref> The two romances depicted in the film, Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman, reflect Griffith's retelling of history. The couples are used as a metaphor, representing the film's broader message of the need for the reconciliation of the North and South to defend white supremacy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://filmracepolitics.weebly.com/blog|title=The Birth of a Nation: The Significance of Love, Romance, and Sexuality|date=March 6, 2015|publisher=Weebly|access-date=August 22, 2015|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208165535/http://filmracepolitics.weebly.com/blog|archive-date=December 8, 2015}}</ref> Among both couples, there is an attraction that forms before the war, stemming from the friendship between their families. With the war, however, both families are split apart, and their losses culminate in the end of the war with the defense of white supremacy. One of the intertitles clearly sums up the message of unity: "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/SalterBirth.htm|title=The Birth of a Nation as American Myth|first=Richard C.|last=Salter|website=The Journal of Religion and Film|series=Vol. 8, No. 2|date=October 2004|access-date=August 22, 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150622205145/http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/SalterBirth.htm|archive-date=June 22, 2015}}</ref>

The film further reinforced the popular belief held by whites, especially in the South, of Reconstruction as a disaster. In his 1929 book ''The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln'', [[Claude Bowers]] treated ''The Birth of a Nation'' as a factually accurate account of Reconstruction.<ref name=Franklin/>{{rp|432}} In ''The Tragic Era'', Bowers presented every black politician in the South as corrupt, portrayed Republican Representative [[Thaddeus Stevens]] as a vicious "[[race traitor]]" intent upon making blacks the equal of whites, and praised the Klan for "saving civilization" in the South.<ref name=Franklin/>{{rp|432}} Bowers wrote about black empowerment that the worst sort of "scum" from the North like Stevens "inflamed the Negro's egoism and soon the lustful assaults began. Rape was the foul daughter of Reconstruction!"<ref name=Franklin/>{{rp|432}}