Rick, I saw it at the theater when it came out and liked it very much, maybe because it was a part of history I knew little about. Tobey Maguire and Jim Caviezel are very good in it. I learned about the situation of German immigrants (like the protagonist) during the war. There are some good scenes: at one point the guerrillas tear open some Union soldiers' letters looking for military information, and end up discussing the writer's illnesses, the conditions of the family farm, the quality of the land... It's a movie that somehow stays inside, despite a certain superficiality and coldness that struck me for some reason, though I don't remember why (it's been a while since I watched it). One of the theses of the movie is that the war's philosophical point was not just abolitionism vs. slavery, but, in a larger sense, modernity vs. narrow-mindedness. When the rebels storm Lawrence, the first thing they burn is the school. I wish I could watch it again to remember something more.