[8] The Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as numerous writers, pointed out that the film endorsed the "Lost Cause" myth.

Major Jackson, who is a professor at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington at the outset of the war, leaves his family behind to fight in the Battle of Manassas.

Jackson is asked by a retreating General Barnard Bee for assistance against the Federal army who is pursuing them after a brief stand on Matthews Hill.

In rallying his shaken troops, Bee launches the name of Stonewall into history and the Confederate Army routs the Federals at Henry House Hill.

Jackson spends the rest of the winter at a local plantation, Moss Neck Manor, where he develops a friendship with Jane Corbin, a young girl who lives there.

Jackson calls upon his chaplain, Beverly Tucker Lacy who knows the area, and asks him to find a route by which the Confederate forces can infiltrate in secret.

While scouting a path at night, Jackson is caught in no-mans-land between the two armies and badly wounded by his own men, who had mistaken him and his staff for Union cavalry.

Ted Turner originally pitched an adaption of Gods and Generals to Warner Bros. Pictures in 2000 and decided to personally finance it after they turned him down.

Among them, 2nd South Carolina String Band portrays the players of "The Bonnie Blue Flag" during a troops entertainment music show.

Russell Crowe was the original choice to play Stonewall Jackson, but scheduling conflicts prevented his availability in the summer and fall of 2001 when the movie was filmed.

After test screening in 2002, Maxwell decided to cut the theatrical release to 3 hours and 40 minutes in order to focus on Stonewall Jackson's story arc.

[19] The film's failure at the box office also caused Turner, who at the time was losing much of his wealth after the AOL-Time Warner merger and estimated his investment in the film to be worth 15 percent of his assets, to cancel his and Maxwell's plans to adapt the third book in the Shaara family's Civil War trilogy The Last Full Measure.

Among the footage edited includes a sub-plot which follows John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor who would eventually assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.

One scene towards the end of the extended cut of the film features Chamberlain and his wife, Fanny, attending a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in which Booth plays Marcus Junius Brutus.

The critical consensus reads, "Filled with two-dimensional characters and pompous self-righteousness, Gods and Generals is a long, tedious sit.

[22] Maxwell blamed the decision to cut the film for a single theatrical release as the cause of its failure, saying "because we had to take so much out, I must confess the story-telling became disjointed in a way that we just couldn't completely fix.

"[24] Gods and Generals is widely viewed as championing the Lost Cause ideology by creating a presentation more favorable to the Confederacy.

[9][10] Writing in The Journal of American History, historian Steven E. Woodworth derided the movie as a modern-day telling of Lost Cause mythology.

[9] Woodworth called the movie "the most pro-Confederate film since Birth of a Nation, a veritable celluloid celebration of slavery and treason."

He summed up his reasons for disliking the movie by saying: Gods and Generals brings to the big screen the major themes of Lost Cause mythology that professional historians have been working for half a century to combat.

"[9] Historian William B. Feis similarly criticized the director's decision "to champion the more simplistic-and sanitized-interpretations found in post-war "Lost Cause" mythology".

[10] Writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center, George Ewert wrote that the film "is part of a growing movement that seeks to rewrite the history of the American South, downplaying slavery and the economic system that it sustained."

It's just an entirely different story, and I have to tell you, I've heard from literally thousands of people through my website, and I get emails every day and try to be as accessible as I can, and the overwhelming percentage of those that wrote me said, 'How could you let them butcher your book like that?'