More than anything, D.W. Griffith wants us to see Ben Cameron as a great heroic character and...it doesn't quite work out that way. From our modern perspective, Ben is a racist, the founder of a te...

What Elsie is There?Like most characters in The Birth of a Nation, Elsie is painted with broad strokes. Like finger-painted strokes. Like a five-year-old could probably put more nuance into a chara...

Phil "The Sultan of 'Stache" Stoneman is the eldest Stone-Bro and the only one of the bunch who survives the war. And he takes an unusual life path as far as Union veterans go.That's because he fal...

Less of a character and more of a symbol, Austin Stoneman represents the Radical Republicans, a group of politicians who advocated for harsh punishments against the South in the aftermath of the Ci...

Silas Lynch's character is probably the most racist aspect of The Birth of a Nation—and that's saying something. Mr. ManipulationA biracial man who becomes Austin Stoneman's protégé, Lynch is p...

D.W. Griffith really wants us to love Dr. and Mrs. Cameron, the heads of the Cam' fam. To him, they represent the best of the old school Southern aristocracy. The only problem with this, however, i...

If you missed the opening credits, you might not even realize that the youngest Cameron daughter is named Flora—she's exclusively referred to as "little sister" or simply "sis" during the film. T...

Margaret Cameron is the oldest Cameron daughter and love interest for the beautifully-mustachioed Phil Stoneman. And, well, that's pretty much her whole character.The one bit worth noting is that s...

For a movie that's so pro-Confederacy, The Birth of a Nation is surprisingly smitten by Abraham Lincoln. He's not portrayed as a tyrant or Northern aggressor, but as a sympathetic leader with a hea...