At the Signpost Up Ahead—It’s The Civil War in The Twilight Zone
ECW welcomes back guest author Raymond Stoll
“JWB.” His silken handkerchief is monogramed JWB, but in 1965 how could this be? Thus ends Season 2, Episode 13 of The Twilight Zone, pertaining to Lincoln’s assassination. This past holiday season, while I could have been watching football, (go Bulldogs!) or reading (go Savas Beatie!) instead I sought Civil War episodes of The Twilight Zone.
War is front and center in many of The Twilight Zone episodes, and the Civil War is present for roll call. No surprise, for the show first aired during the Civil War’s centennial. The show’s host and writer of many episodes, 5’ 4” Rod Serling, had enlisted at the age of 17 during World War II and had served in the Pacific theater, so you can be assured that he dealt with war episodes based on first-hand experience. I found three of The Twilight Zone episodes that specifically used the Civil War as the setting for his imagination-bending stories, and several others which used Civil War related luminaries as the tales unfolded.
Civil war destruction features prominently in “The Passersby,” centered around a war-ravaged mansion occupied by a patriotic Southern heroine. Close to the home’s splintered entrance is a dusty road where hundreds of broken men stream past, both Confederate and Union. As the episode progresses, the road gets quiet and only one person is left walking down it, Abraham Lincoln. He tells the woman that he is called the last casualty of the Civil War. Without revealing more plot, let me say that if you can choose only one episode, this is the one I recommend. It’s classic Twilight Zone, and it can bring full tears to the sympathetic eye.
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is set in Civil War Alabama. In this episode Owl Creek Bridge is an important railroad bridge held by the Union, and a man caught vandalizing it is to be executed by Union troops who plan to hang him from the trestle. This was not your usual Twilight Zone episode. It was a short film that won an award at the Cannes Film Festival before Rod Serling picked it up. It has a European touch but if it was good enough for Rod Serling, it’s good enough for me.
“Still Valley,” is an episode that imagines a Yankee-occupied Southern town where the occupiers, their equipment, and their horses are all frozen in time, not a twitch among them, not even an eyeball. With the help of Satan, they’ve been conjured under a spell. The premise is that the devil was for a time helping the Confederacy to win. And while many a northerner in that day may have believed that, I suspect fervent Christian Stonewall Jackson, his brother in prayer, Robert E. Lee, and CSA President Jefferson Davis, who was famously interrupted in worship on April 2, 1865, would have heartily disputed that premise.
And then there are episodes which use Civil War luminaries, if you will, instead of the Civil War itself to help tell reality-warping tales.
Jesse James, who rode with Bloody Bill Anderson, is featured as a 6’ 2” burly man who strikes fear into the title character of the episode, “Showdown With Lance McGrew.”
William T. Sherman, according to 1964 history professor Walter Jameson in the episode, “Long Live Walter Jameson,” is a pyromaniac. Serving on Sherman’s staff was a Major Hugh Skelton, who is found in a 100-year-old Matthew Brady photograph to have an uncanny resemblance to Professor Jameson. Interesting generational note to this episode, Walter Jameson is asked if his grandfather fought in the war, not a question we would see asked today.
Colonel George Custer, a cavalry general during the Civil War, had a last stand at Little Big Horn, and Rod Serling found three military men willing to go back in time and die in support of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, in the episode, “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms.”
Lastly, the episode referenced at the start of this article is titled, “Back There.” Time travel and its ramifications are the central theme. On April 14, 1965, in Washington, DC, main character Peter Corrigan, played by Russell Johnson, has a dizzy spell and it’s suddenly 7:00 pm in Washington, DC, on that black day a century earlier. His efforts to prevent Lincoln’s assassination are blunted by one John Wilkes Booth. For Corrigan, as if from a dream, it’s suddenly 1965 again. Lincoln still had been assassinated, but history was wrinkled. About to dismiss the whole strange episode of events, he pulls out his pocket square to rub the sweat from his brow.
One other luminary, the war’s most famous battle, Gettysburg, occurs by mention in two of these episodes.
Overall, The Twilight Zone episodes are not historically “to a T.” They are stories not of sight and sound but of imagination, to use Mr. Serling’s words. They have a twist at the end that stimulates the senses. And for this article, I offer a twist at the end. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” televised in 1965, was written by Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce of the 9th Indiana. Bierce fought at the battles of Philippi, Rich Mountain, and Shiloh; and later served on the staff of General William B. Hazen. Several years after the war Bierce went into writing and publishing. It is not written if he traveled to Still Valley or if he knew Jesse James, George Custer, or Abraham Lincoln, or maybe he did, in The Twilight Zone.
References:
Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television’s Last Angry Man, by Gordon F. Sanders ISBN 0452270383
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce downloaded 1/2/2024
The Twilight Zone Episodes:
“Back There” written by Rod Serling (Season 2, Episode 13) 1961
“The Passersby” by Rod Serling (Season 3, Episode 4) 1961
“Still Valley” by Manly Wade Wellman (Season 3, Episode 11) 1961
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce (Season 5, Episode 22) 1964
“Long Live Walter Jameson” by Charles Beaumont (Season 1, Episode 24) 1960
“Showdown With Lance McGrew” by Rod Serling, Frederick Louis Fox, Richard P. McDonagh (Season 3, Episode 20) 1962
“The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms” by Rod Serling (Season 5, Episode 10) 1964
So, in “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms,” why didn’t they take the tank?
Their commanding officer offered similar sentiment at the end. There is no answer to your good question. Two theories here. Option one. They get so curious and excited under the spell that they don’t think about it. Hard to swallow. Or maybe the why was there in the original screenplay but got edited out to make room for a commercial? Serling not likely to have allowed that. No good answer I could find. Rewatched it to see.
Thank you for your reply. I remember that episode well, and the COs comment about the tank. Maybe they couldn’t take the tank because it was a JEB Stuart model and old JEB still held a grudge against his Civil War adversary Custer.
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” author Ambrose Bierce was a member of the 9th Indiana Infantry and drew maps for Gen. Hazen, one of which is reproduced in Hazen’s autobiography. My daughter read the story in a high school literature class.
It seems that all of the old Western TV series that I saw as a kid had episodes devoted to something involving the Civil War. One of my cable TV channels that I frequently view these days airs nothing but Western-themed TV shows and movies, most of which are from ‘back in the day’, and once in awhile one of them has something about the Civil War. My personal interest in the Civil War was inspired in part by such TV shows.
An aside here. There is an interesting episode of the TV series “The Outer Limits” which is centered on the Battle of Gettysburg. It’s not from rhe original “Outer Limits” of the early 1960s, but the reboot that ran from 1995 or so into the early 2000s. The episode itself is titled simply “Gettysburg” and can be viewed on You Tube.
Thanks for an outstanding presentation and for listing the episodes. This is a topic that really piqued my interest, and probably the interests of many other Civil War buffs. I appreciate your time and efforts on the behalf of all of us.
It may be of interest to you to know, if not already, how the name William relates to gold. Think Guillermo the Spanish version of Wilhelm, which referenced the guilded helmets worn by Germanic knights in days of yore. I say this because your words shine like gold. Thanks!