AllMovie

Next to D.W. Griffith, no film producers made more Civil War dramas than Thomas H. Ince. Previewed in March of 1913 and released nationally in April, Ince's With Lee in Virginia was one of the producer's most ambitious efforts to date. Over 100 individual "takes" were used to illustrate this story of a courageous young Confederate officer, played by future director Henry King. The film comes to a stirring (if somewhat racially questionable) climax when a faithful black slave shoulders the blame for the murder of a Union officer, thereby saving the heroine from the gallows. Among the historical personages depicted in this three-reel "spectacular" were Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln, the latter role played with utter conviction by "Honest Abe" lookalike Hugh Ford.