Killer Angel: Fremantle

This is the fifth of 13 mashups of clips from "Gettysburg" (1993) that attempt to capture the motives of major characters from the film and its source, Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels. To go to the next and those that follow, go to    • Killer Angel: Stuart  .

After considering the tragic circumstances facing Generals Armistead and Garnett, we may be offered comic relief by Arthur Fremantle, observing for Queen Victoria behind Confederate lines. In the film, he served chiefly as a sounding board for southern officers' reflections, tilting his head and nodding with apparent sympathy at every opinion offered. In the novel, however, he was an absurdly comical character, with his own thoughts fully shared. We hear in this clip only a snippet of the extended soliloquy from the book in which he expressed confidence that, after the war, the South would want to seek reunification with the mother country. After all, they shared a common history, language, religion, and class system, a "love of the land and of tradition, of the right form, of breeding, in their horses, their women." Even their names - Lee, Stuart, Longstreet - were English. What, Longstreet was Dutch? Well, that must be the exception that proved the rule! He can't be talked out of his certainty that the South was England transplanted, while the North's "great experiment in democracy, the equality of rabble," was on the road to failure. In fact, on returning to England, Fremantle would publish a well-received book with his observations, no doubt making money from its sale. Were these earnings Fremantle's motivation all along? Royalties may come close, but perhaps royalty comes closer, as Fremantle reached the remarkable conclusion in his book that the South would win the war! If the South truly was England transplanted, then wouldn't a Confederate victory prove that England, a society that would give someone like Fremantle privilege, was superior to the diverse, materialistic American North? In other words, what Fremantle was really seeking at Gettysburg is self-justification.

But who could have been at Gettysburg and come away convinced that the South would win the war but a fool, which is what Fremantle surely was.

The quotes are from The Killer Angels, p.173.