GENRE: Civil War / History / Action/ Drama

LOGLINE

Caleb’s Triumph is one man’s odyssey of self discovery and redemption, set against the turbulent background of the American Civil War and Reconstruction in North Carolina’s mountain country and in upstate New York. The values instilled in Caleb as a child, including a strong belief that education is important enough to die for, are the moral compass that guide him on his journey.  He epitomizes Booker T. Washington’s statement that:

“Character is power. Success is not measured by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which a man has to overcome to succeed.”

The film is based on actual historical events and characters.

SYNOPSIS

While “Politically Correct” revisionists deny that any Black Americans saw combat in the Civil War as Confederate soldiers, there is substantial documentation to the contrary – pension records, newspaper accounts, accounts in the official military records of both sides, and first-hand accounts by numerous historical figures, including Frederick Douglass who wrote:

There are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate Army - as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government . . . There were such soldiers at Manassas and they are probably there still.

Caleb’s Triumph is the fictional life story of Caleb Parker, a Free Person of Color from a close-knit family in North Carolina’s mountain country, who goes to war first as a Union partisan and then changes sides after his father is killed. The story explores his reasons for joining the Confederates and how the War changed his life. Whereas before the war, he had enjoyed relative freedom as a Free Person of Color and skilled craftsman, after the war he encounters racial prejudice both in the North and South, as well as Northern resentment for his role in having been a Rebel soldier.

Paradoxically, the war that was supposed to be about freedom has made him less free. He succeeds against the odds by drawing upon his inner resources – the values instilled in him as a child by his close-knit extended family.

OPENING CREDITS

The opening credits run concurrently with still photographs of actual, historically documented Black Confederate soldiers and archival footage of Black Veterans at 20th century reunions. From these stills, the film segues to a tintype of Caleb – as a young man in camp with his comrades and then a picture of him in his veteran’s regalia.

Pack of wolves trotting through the woods. They are lean and scraggly looking. The alpha male stops. His ears stand up as he sniffs the air for a scent. He suddenly takes off at a quicker pace with the rest of the pack loping behind him.

The image shifts to the legs of a boy walking slowly. His pace begins to quicken until he breaks into a run. The wolves now are running at full speed and the alpha wolf emerges from the woods first. The pack follows as the boy breaks into a run screaming. 

The scene shifts to Caleb Parker as young man in his blacksmith shop.  Seeing the boy and the wolves chasing him, he grabs his carbine, raises it to his shoulder, and fires.  The smoke from his rifle dissolves into the smoke of a train engine.

As the train passes underneath, the scene changes to the inside of a passenger car filled with many old men. As the trains’ whistle blows, the focus is on Caleb, now an old man and a younger man, his grandson, J.C. Parker, a student at the Tuskegee Institute. 

Caleb is lost in thought about what the Civil War meant to him. The train slows as they arrive at the 50th Anniversary of Gettysburg in 1913. Caleb and J.C. disembark from the train. After he registers, he asks another black man for directions to the Confederate camps. This man, George Scott, is a veteran of the 54th Massachusetts – the fabled regiment depicted in Glory – who can’t believe that Caleb fought for the South. The dialogue turns to Caleb’s story.

Caleb explains that he was born free and that his childhood best friend, Tom Parker, was a white man who died on Culp’s Hill. He reinforces this fact by mentioning that their fathers also were best friends from childhood and that Tom’s father, John Parker, had freed his own father, Jonah Parker, before he was born. The black and white Parker families lived side by side.

George replies that he, too, was born free. Caleb replies that like the other Parker men he was trained as a skilled blacksmith and gunsmith.  When Caleb tells George that their mothers, Susan and Sissy, made sure that all of the children in the household were educated, George is surprised.

The story now shifts to western North Carolina in 1851.  Susan Parker is running a small, improvised school at home, and teaches black children, so they can read their scriptures. This is tolerated until she and Sissy get caught sheltering a runaway slave, Ruth, and her daughter, Poppy.   Her teaching her own to read and write has been tolerated, but in sheltering a runaway slave, Susan has crossed the lines of southern society and goes under suspicion in the community. Slave catchers identify Poppy as the runaway by tearing her dress to expose a brand on her shoulder. Ruth is the forced, but favorite, belly warmer of her master and the slave catchers show her mercy only because of her “status.”

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Carolina mountain country is divided in loyalties.  A tarred and feathered Abolitionist preacher, who is being ridden out of town on a rail, is saved only because Tom, his father, and other Unionists aid Sheriff Noland in his rescue. Caleb and his father only can helplessly watch as the incident unfolds. Tom’s fiancée, Emily Thompson, is horrified by the incident.’

When the Confederates turn to conscription to increase the size of their armies, Tom must make a choice.  Tom decides to fight for the Union and Caleb insists that he must go with him.  As the family plots the strategy for their escape to the North, Goldman Bryson, a local Union guerilla arrives with an offer to escort them to safety.

In Tennessee, they first meet Tinker Dave Beatty, a bigoted Union guerillas who assumes that Caleb is just Tom’s body servant.  When Caleb displays his marksmanship with the state-of-the-art center fire “Parker Carbines” he and Tom invented, Beatty changes his mind, but neither Tom nor Caleb want to ride with a man more racist than any they have ever known. Out of the crowd of men steps the Reverend “Black Bill” Carter, a hero among Union guerillas and the brother of two Union officers. In joining this band of Union irregulars.

Caleb and Tom soon learn that while Carter is no racist, like Tinker Dave, he is a brutal murderer of unarmed men. As they ride with Carter’s band through raids, ambushes, and the battles of Tazewell and Perryville, they become very disillusioned.  What Caleb and Tom witness in the border country guerilla war is nothing but a pretext for carrying on old mountain feuds. Revenge on one side leads to yet more unnecessary civilian bloodshed on the other.  Guerilla leaders on both sides, including the Rebel, Champ Ferguson, use the war as an excuse to settle personal scores - - - and Tinker Dave is Champ’s worst enemy. 

It is because of what they have witnessed that the boys decide to return home in late 1862.  When they arrive home Caleb and Tom find that Yankee marauders have brutally murdered both of their fathers, despite the family’s pro-Union sympathies. Ironically, they had met the leader of this band, a Captain Lucius Stevens from New York, on the road as he is leaving North Carolina after the massacre.

Enraged, they decide to switch sides and join the Confederate army in the East. For them, the War has become an issue of defending their homeland and families.  They swear to find their fathers’ killer and avenge their families on the field of honor.

Heartbroken, they go to the barn to unsaddle and groom their horses. Each of them tries to cry silently to protect their dignity, but when they see the tears on each others cheeks they swear to tell no one.  Tom and Caleb sit down, side by side, on a bench and begin to sob uncontrollably.  Caleb’s sister, Melinda Parker, appears at the door to the barn; she says nothing as she watches them crying.  A single tear streams from one of her eyes and she walks away.

When the boys return to the house, Susan and Sissy notice both of them scratching - - - and suspect fleas, lice, or worse.  The boys end up outdoors getting a lye soap bath during which Emily arrives at the Parker compound - - - much to Tom’s embarrassment. 

Following the bathe from which Tom and Caleb emerge none the worse for wear, but raw and scalded, Tom and Emily go for a walk and discuss Ton’s decision to fight for the Confederacy. A staunch Abolitionist, Emily opposes Tom’s decision, but Tom argues that the war now is personal and that he must fight to protect his home and family.  For Tom, as well as Caleb, the North now represents oppression and not liberation.

After spending the winter in North Carolina, Tom and Caleb leave on their journey to find Robert E. Lee’s army. South of Fredericksburg, they meet a young slave boy, Jamie, whose entire family and white master have been killed by Union General Kilpatrick’s cavalry. Caleb adopts the young boy and sees to his being properly clothed.

The next night as they are camped, and with Jamie off tending the horses, a lone Union cavalryman tries to capture them.  As he is about to shoot Tom and Caleb, he is stabbed in the back and killed by Jamie, who tells them it was a good thing he brought his Momma’s best cooking knife.

As Stonewall Jackson’s Corps approaches Chancellorsville, Tom and Caleb join the Richmond Sharpshooters, who are part of the 23rd Virginia. As the assault on the Union right flank, held by the XI Corps, is about to begin Caleb is befriended by Ben Roberts and Elijah Myers; Myers is a deaf mute Jewish Confederate, who, like Caleb, is an exceptional marksman. 

During the attack Caleb is haunted by the massacre of his and Tom’s fathers and keeps seeing the face of Captain Smith in the faces of all the Yankee soldiers he shoots.  Again, Caleb initially faces prejudice, but wins respect because of his marksmanship with the Parker Carbine. In the aftermath of the first day at Chancellorsville, Caleb meets Jackson’s body servant, Jim Lewis, and prays with him after Jackson has been wounded. They establish a bond when Caleb discovers that Jackson, too, taught black children how to read their scriptures, just like Tom’s mother Susan.

When he hears a wolf’s howl, Caleb’s superstitions start to get the best of him.  He heard the wolf’s howl the night before his and Tom’s father’s died, and now he fears that Jackson, or perhaps Jamie, who is missing will die as well.  When Jamie returns he is relieved.

During the second day of the battle at Chancellorsville, Caleb, Tom, and Elijah team up in displays of marksmanship as the Confederacy struggles to break the Union lines and to finally secure victory. For Caleb, that victory comes at a cost. Jamie, waiting on a hill behind the lines is killed by a stray bullet. Caleb prays for an explanation of why this innocent child had to die.  He buries him and covers the grave with rocks.

At Gettysburg, they see major action and fight heroically.  However, Tom is killed at the battle on Culp’s Hill – ironically by German troops whom they had captured at Chancellorsville and declined to kill. In the midst of the action that follows, Elijah saves Caleb’s life but sacrifices his own in the process.  Caleb, however, still faces fierce hand to hand combat with three more Union soldiers before he can recover Tom’s body and assist the wounded Ben Roberts off the field.

Suddenly, Caleb is alone and must draw upon his own resources during the long journey to bring Tom’s body home for burial.  He travels with men from the 26th North Carolina Infantry that was decimated in Pickett’s Charge.  Reed Wyatt is suspicious of Caleb because of rumors that he fought with Union guerillas earlier in the war.  Caleb wins his respect by using the dogcart with Tom’s rudely built coffin to help Reed’s brother, Wilson Wyatt, who lost a leg at Gettysburg.  When Wilson dies of gangrene, Caleb builds a coffin for him as well, and seals respect from Reed.

On the journey, he observes a slave auction in progress – and recognizes Poppy on the auction block by the brand on her shoulder – she was the young child whom Susan had gotten in trouble for teaching to read as a runaway slave many years back.  A flash of recognition passes between them but he is powerless to do anything. He hears the auction and knows that Thomas Lenoir, who owns property near Caleb’s home, has bought her and her mother.

After Tom’s funeral, he stays in Carolina and is in demand as a gunsmith. Thomas Lenoir is among his customers.  Lenoir develops a great admiration for Caleb’s skill, and that of his younger brother, George Parker.  To quell rumors about having his having been in a Yankee unit at the beginning of the War, Caleb, as well as George, join the local Home Guard and fight in the battle of Soco Creek Gap alongside Thomas’ Cherokee Legion, the last engagement of the War in North Carolina.

The night before the battle, he hears a wolf howl in the distance --- bringing back a superstition his mother had instilled in him as a child. He’s heard a howling wolf the night before they found their fathers killed, the night before Jackson’s death, and the night before Tom’s death.  At Soco Gap, he once again sees the face of Captain Stevens in the Yankee opposing forces. But this time it’s different – it IS Captain Stevens. Caleb has him cornered and is able to settle the score using his Parker Carbine. It’s Smith’s death that the wolf was foretelling.

After Soco Gap, the last Confederate forces in North Carolina surrender. The War’s end brings the horrors of Reconstruction. Backlash is rampant within the white community, who blame blacks for the war and the toll it has exacted. Free blacks who had enjoyed relative freedom pre-War now are persecuted.

Poppy and her mother, Ruth, remain at “The Den,” which is owned by Thomas Lenoir, and who had helped them work to buy back their freedom before the war ended. Lenoir also has hired Caleb and George to work as blacksmith’s at his plantation. Caleb now has the “excuse” to court Poppy; they fall in love and marry.

Melinda also marries, and on the day that she announces that she is pregnant, John Singleton, Annie’s childhood sweetheart returns from the war.  They marry as well.  Susan and Sissy open a school for the black children, who have recently been emancipated, which draws the ire of the local racists.  In a winter raid, the Parker family farm is burned by vigilante “night riders” – forerunners of the KKK.  Susan, who had once said that education was so important that it was worth dying for, stands by her beliefs and both she and Sissy are killed by the night riders.

Poppy is pregnant with Caleb’s first son and Caleb decides to head north, hoping to find better opportunities.  John and Annie, Jebediah and Melinda, and George go with them.  John has relatives in Pittsburgh.  Jebediah, a cook, wants to go to Maryland.  Maggy Parker has left to be a Governess in Virginia.

At Pittsburgh, John, Annie and George, who is enamored of the women and the job prospects, decide to settle in that city.  Caleb, sensing the condescension of John’s relatives and their friends, wants to continue on.  He also does not like the prospect of working in a factory in a large city. Caleb and Poppy encounter just as much prejudice up north but of a less obvious, more insidious type – nobody will hire him.

In upstate New York, he meets and befriends an 11 year old white boy, Frank Higgins. His father, O.T. Higgins, is a wealthy businessman who owns a vacant blacksmith shop.  Mr. Higgins decides to give Caleb a chance, assuming he’s an escaped slave. The previous tenant’s nephew, Angus Stevens, is a bigot and Copperhead Democrat who can’t stand the idea of his uncle, a Union soldier killed in the War, being replaced by a black man.

Stevens plots ways to get him fired. Stevens tries to provoke Caleb into fighting him – even in New York, a black man hitting a white man meant serious trouble. Caleb won’t take the bait, but in the course of this exchange, Smith finds out that Caleb fought as a Confederate. This enrages Stevens, who loses his balance when hitting Caleb and hits his own head when he falls.

Stevens accuses Caleb of hitting him and threatens to tell Higgins about this and Caleb’s Confederate service so it will get him fired. Caleb is faced with a moral dilemma and decides to “own up” to Higgins, who begrudgingly lets him stay because of his honesty, particularly when he learns the reasons why Caleb joined the Confederates and the massacre of his father. However, he’s under probation.

He goes to the home of Angus Stevens’ uncle, his predecessor as the town blacksmith to return tools left in the workshop to his widow. There, he finds that the blacksmith was none other than his nemesis, Captain Stevens – killer of his father and Tom’s father! The widow thinks her husband was a war hero. Caleb almost tells her the truth, but decides not to shatter her illusions. The war is over; he has killed Stevens and ironically has ended up with his old job. Justice has been served and nothing is to be served by opening old wounds. The time for revenge is over.

A year later, Caleb hears a wolf howling again in the night, the harbinger of death as per his childhood superstition. Their only son, Frank, is on his way to Caleb’s and behind the blacksmith shop is attacked by wolves – the same wolves that Caleb had heard the night before. In a dramatic showdown, Caleb saves Frank’s life, using his “Parker Carbine.”  In the aftermath, Caleb learns that O.T.’s wife has died earlier that day.

Several weeks later, O.T. offers to reward him. Caleb asks for nothing for himself but remembering Susan’s words, he asks that his children’s advanced education be endowed.  Higgins goes a step further and helps him patent his unique “Parker Carbine”.  When the patent is sold to the Winchester Repeating Arms in exchange for stock, funding for the education of future generations of Parkers is ensured.

ENDING SCENES

The film ends in a reprise at the 50th Anniversary of Gettysburg where Caleb has a spirited debate with the 54th Massachusetts veteran about what the war achieved and failed to achieve. The debate ends as a wagon approaches in which Ben Roberts is a passenger. Ben insists that Caleb ride with the whites and begins to recount Caleb’s heroism on Culp’s Hill. Later, Caleb hears President Wilson speak and has his image sketched with a Spencer carbine on which the Parker was based. J.C. helps Caleb visit Culp’s Hill, the site of Tom’s death where Caleb finally gains closure.

After the resolution of the Gettysburg sequence at the end of the film, we fade into the epilogue – J.C. delivering the eulogy at Caleb’s funeral with Caleb’s coffin draped with a Confederate flag.  We find out about the family’s education being endowed by the fortune in Winchester Arms stock but the grandson says that Caleb’s most important legacy was the Parker family values he passed down to future generations.

J.C. Parker’s closing words are a testimony to Caleb’s belief in the value of education:

The shackles that enslaved us were not made of iron. The more dangerous shackles were those we put on ourselves. Caleb helped us understand that no man could free us unless we first freed ourselves. He gave us the desire for the education that would lead to our truest freedom. Without education we have no chance at economic parity. Without education, we cannot realize our dreams.