Birth of a Quotation: Woodrow Wilson and "Like Writing History with Lightning"
Author(s): Mark E. Benbow
Source: The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , October 2010, Vol. 9, No. 4,
Native Americans and Indian Policy in the Progressive Era (October 2010), pp. 509-533
Published by: Society for Historians of the Gilded Age & Progressive Era
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Birth of a Quotation: Woodrow Wilson
and "Like Writing History with
Lightning"
By Mark E. Benbow, Marymount University
In February 1915, upon viewing The Birth of a Nation at a special White House screening,
President Woodrow Wilson reportedly remarked, "It's like writing history with lightning. My
only regret is that it is all so terribly true." This line has appeared in numerous books and
articles over the past seventy years. This article examines the history of this alleged quotation
and the sources where it has appeared. The article weighs the evidence that Wilson effusively
praised in these words one of the most racist major movies in American history.
The quotation by Woodrow Wilson is famous. In February 1915, after
viewing David Wark Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation at a special White
House screening, President Wilson reportedly exclaimed, "It's like writing
history with Hghtning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true." This
Une has appeared in numerous books and articles over the past seventy years.
Histories of race, of the movies, and of the Wilson administration often
repeat the quotation as an ?lustration of Wilson's racial views. It is one of
the most famous of Wilson's remarks, along with "making the world safe for
democracy." However, there remains an unanswered question: Did Wilson
actuaUy make this remark or is "writing history with Ughtning" Uke "a war to
end aU wars," a misattribution? I have located nine different variations of the
"Ughtning" quotation that have appeared during the ninety years since Birth
first screened. In this essay, I propose to trace the origin of this remark and
to try to answer the question of whether Wilson praised in this manner this
infamously racist movie.1
I need to begin, however, by noting that this essay is not intended to be
a denial that Wilson was, in fact, a racist. Born in antebeUum Virginia in
1856, Wilson grew up during the Civil War and Reconstruction in Georgia
and South CaroUna. Wilson's Presbyterian minister father defended slavery
in the pulpits of his churches, and although the Wilson family did not own
slaves, the household did have black servants. Their status is unclear, as they
?or the variations and where they appeared, see the appendix. The author wishes to thank
all those who reviewed this article in its many early forms, but special thanks are due to Dan
Murphy and the journal's anonymous readers for their helpful comments, and to my wife,
Annette, who is a diligent and patient sounding board. Also thank you to Edmund Potter,
formerly of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, who sparked my interest in this topic,
and to the helpful staff at the Library of Congress who aided my research. An early version
of this paper was delivered at the 2007 Popular Culture Association meeting in Boston. Of
course, any remaining errors are my own.
Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era 9:4 (October 2010)
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510 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
may have been slaves provided along with the manse as a service to Wilson's
father by his congregation, or they may even have been free blacks hired by
the family or by the church. As president of Princeton (1902-10), Wilson
dissuaded black students from applying for admission. As president of the
United States (1913?21), Wilson allowed most of his cabinet members to
segregate federal workplaces for the first time since the Civil War. When a
delegation of blacks protested his discriminatory actions, Wilson told them,
"If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it."2
What this essay explores is not Wilson's opinion on race, which is well
known at least in general terms, but the history of the one specific quotation,
"like writing history with lightning." If Wilson did not make the remark,
then it should not be attributed to him, and if he did say it, then it should be
a part of the historical record with better evidence than its popularity. The
fact that the quotation is now, as Wilson scholar Arthur Link expressed it, a
"tradition" is not sufficient reason to continue using it.3
First, however, some background is needed. To what was Wilson reacting
when he saw The Birth of a Nation in February 1915? The film evolved out
of the racist crusade by Thomas Dixon Jr., a Baptist minister from North
Carolina who served in churches in New York City, but also worked
as a lawyer and an author. However, Dixon might be best described as a
professional racist who made his living writing books and plays attacking the
presence of African Americans in the United States. A firm believer not only
in white supremacy, but also in the "degeneration" of blacks after slavery
ended, Dixon thought the ideal solution to America's racial problems was
to deport all blacks to Africa. In the short term, however, his main goal was
to proselytize a Southern view of Reconstruction to the rest of the country.
Dixon had been outraged by a performance of Uncle Toms Cabin and resolved
to undo its influence on attitudes toward the South and slavery. In Dixon's
mind, white southerners were the victims, not the villains, in American
history and ought to be portrayed as such.
In 1902, Dixon published The Leopards Spots, in which Simon Legree, the
villainous slaveowner in Uncle Toms Cabin, is a pro-Yankee scalawag. In The
Leopards Spots, the Klansmen appear as heroes, bringing order to the disorder
caused by Reconstruction and freed Southern blacks. Although it sold well,
it received poor reviews, mosdy because Dixon's prose was more purple
than polished. One review noted that it was "thrown into the form of a
novel, so far as it can be said to possess form at all." Dixon followed The
2Email with Erick Montgomery, executive director, Historic Augusta, Oct. 2006; "Remarks
by Wilson and a Dialog," Nov. 12, 1914, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur Link
(Princeton, 1979), 31:301. Hereafter referred to as PWW followed by volume and page num
bers.
?ditorial note by Link, PWW, 32:267.
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Benbo?P / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 511
leopard's Spots with The Clansman in 1905. In both novels, Dixon portrayed
freed blacks as incapable of suppressing their animalistic instincts and unable
to resist their urges for white women. Once again the Ku Klux Klan was the
hero of the story. More propaganda than literature, the novel sold enough
copies to encourage Dixon to turn it into a play. However, producing the play
must have been sometimes difficult as most theaters were not large enough
to stage the climax?the ride of a small army of Klansmen to rescue the
imperiled white heroine from a threatening former slave, accompanied by
an actual cross-burning. Despite these technical difficulties, The Clansman
made a successful tour of the South even while earning scathing newspaper
reviews such as the one by the Richmond News-Leader, which called it "about
as elevating as a lynching." In 1906, the play opened in New York City and
again received poor reviews. Financially successful despite the reviews, Dixon
formed a second touring company, and the play was performed for five years
in cities outside of the former Confederate states, including Washington and
Philadelphia.4
In 1911, Dixon began approaching film companies, beginning with
Kinemacolor, a company that made early color films. Kinemacolor began
production of The Clansman in 1912 or early 1913 but went out of business
before the film was completed. Dixon began looking for a new backer and
found director David W. Griffith. Griffith had left the Biograph company
in 1914 and, along with financial backer Harry Aitken, began looking for a
"special" story to make as a first film to launch their new company. Griffith
was familiar with Dixon from his acting days, when he starred for a time in
the play The One Woman, produced by Dixon in 1906. Moreover, Griffith
shared many of Dixon's views on race and the South. A native of Kentucky
and son of a Confederate cavalry officer, Griffith had grown up Ustening to
stories about his father's heroics in defense of Southern civilization. It was
not difficult for Griffith to transplant those feelings into Dixon's story. In
his memoirs, Griffith noted that when he reached the climax of the novel,
he could "just see these Klansmen in a movie with their white robes flying."5
In 1914, Griffith purchased the option to film Dixon's story. The resulting
film, initially entided The Clansman, was only pardy based on Dixon's work.
The first half of the film took place just before and during the Civil War and
ADial, May 1, 1903, quoted in Anthony Slide, American Racist: The Ufe and Films of Thomas
Dixon (Lexington, KY 2004), 26-37, 51-69; Richmond News-header, quoted in ibid., 60. Dixon
also wrote other plays with white supremacist themes, none of which enjoyed the same popu
lar success as Clansman.
5Slide, American Racist, 71-73; Richard Schickel, D. W. Griffith: An American Ufe (New York,
1984), 23-24; David W. Griffith, The Man Who Invented Hollywood: The Autobiography of D. W.
Griffith, ed. James Hart (Louisville, KY, 1972), 88; Melvyn Stokes, D. W. Griffith's The Birth
of a Nation: A History of (The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time" (New York, 2007),
53-54.
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512 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
was written by Griffith. The second half of the film, which takes place during
Reconstruction, was based on the play version of The Clansman. The film's
script followed two families, the Northern Stonemans and the Southern
Camerons. Friends before the war, they were separated by the conflict in
which each family lost sons on the batdefield. After the war, the two families
were finally united in opposition to the abuses of the freed blacks and their
Northern carpetbagger supporters. In the end, the families are linked by
marriage signifying the reunion of the United States. Filmed in southern
California beginning on July 4, 1914, it opened in Los Angeles on February
8,1915. The film was renamed The Birth of a Nation, the "nation" in this case
being a reunited United States, reunified by the Ku Klux Klan restoring white
rule to the South.6
The film was received warmly by the initial test audiences, but Dixon's plays
had sparked protests and even small riots in the past. Dixon was concerned
that the film would draw even heavier demonstrations, as it was designed to
be far more emotionally powerful than the plays. Throughout the United
States, censorship boards and local political leaders had the power to ban
a film from screening if they felt the movie was somehow injurious to the
public. Dixon needed a way to bypass such obstacles. In late January 1915,
he wrote to President Wilson's secretary, Joseph Tumulty, and asked if he
could have a half-hour appointment with the president. Tumulty scheduled
the appointment for February 3. Dixon did not specify what he wanted to
discuss with Wilson, only that he was working on a new powerful form of
communication, a "universal language."7 Dixon believed that if he could tell
would-be censors that the president of the United States had viewed the film,
then they would have less reason to stop it from being shown.8
Dixon and Griffith had both admired Wilson's historical writings. The
director used Wilson's five-volume History of the American People, originally
published in 1902, as a reference source for The Birth of a Nation. Dixon
knew Wilson from Johns Hopkins University, where they were both graduate
students in history in 1883?84, after which the two exchanged letters but
did not remain in frequent contact. In 1887, Dixon arranged for Professor
Wilson to receive a honorary degree from Wake Forest College, where Dixon
was one of the most notable alumni. It was not unreasonable for Dixon to
assume that his old school friend would receive him and agree to view the
film.9
Wilson met with Dixon at the White House on February 3,1915, a few days
^here are numerous accounts of the making of the film. See, for example, Schickel, D. W.
Griffith, 212-50.
7Thomas Dixon Jr. to Joseph Patrick Tumulty, Jan. 27,1915, PWW, 32:142.
Thomas Dixon, The Flaming Sword (Atlanta, 1939), 203-04, 2SA-56.
9For Dixon's earlier relationship with Wilson, see PWW, 4:259, 5:515-16, 534.
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 513
before the film opened in Los Angeles. Dixon asked if he could show Wilson
the new historic film he had been involved in making, a favor requested of
Wilson as a historian and scholar, not as president. Wilson noted that he was
still in official mourning for his wife Ellen, who had died the previous August.
As such, it would be inappropriate for him to go to the theater. However, if
Dixon could show his film at the White House, then Wilson could invite
family and some cabinet members to come watch. Dixon agreed.10
It is unclear if Dixon ever told Wilson just what his film was about, but
given Dixon's career and the notoriety attached to the play The Clansman,
it is not unreasonable to assume that Wilson must have had some idea of
at least the general tenor of the film.11 Dixon later told Wilson's secretary,
Joseph Tumulty, "Of course I didn't dare allow the President to know the
real big purpose back of my film?which was to revolutionize Northern
sentiments by a presentation of history that would transform every man in
my audience into a good Democrat!...What I told the President was that
I would show him the birth of a new art?the launching of the mightiest
engine for molding public opinion in the history of the world."12
The Birth of a Nation was shown at the White House on the evening of
February 18, 1915, in the East Room. Contrary to the common belief, it
was not the first film shown in the White House. The president and his
family had viewed Cabina in June 1914.13 The attendees included Wilson,
his daughter Margaret, White House physician Cary Grayson, and several
members of Wilson's cabinet and their families. Dixon and Griffith were also
present. At Wilson's request, there was no press coverage of the screening,
and Washington newspapers took only minimal notice of the event. The
Washington Post society page observed only that "noted author" Thomas
Dixon was visiting Washington and staying at the New Willard Hotel. The
Evening Star reported that Wilson was interested in the film "due to the great
lesson in peace it teaches." It is at this point that the historical record becomes
unclear. How, specifically, did Wilson react to the showing?14
10PlHF,32:142nl.
"There were no copies of any of Dixon's books in Wilson's library at the time of Wilson's
death in 1924. (The original list is in the collection of the Woodrow Wilson House, Washing
ton, DC). It can be tempting to assume that Wilson's taste in books was too elevated to enjoy
Dixon's rather overheated prose, but Wilson's fondness for various westerns and detective
novels make such a judgment untenable.
12Thomas Dixon Jr. to Joseph Tumulty, May 1,1915, quoted in PWW, 32:142. One wonders
what Tumulty, a Northern urban Catholic Democrat, thought of Dixon's remark that "good
Democrats" viewed race relations through a Southern prism.
13Noted by Arthur Lennig, "Myth and Fact: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation," Film
History 16 (Apr. 2004): 117-41. "Movies on the Lawn," Washington Post, June 27,1914.
^Washington Post, Feb. 19, 1915; Washington Evening Star, Feb. 18, 19, 1915. The complete
guest list is unknown but may also have included Wilson's middle daughter, Jessie, as well as
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514 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
One of those present in 1915 was Marjorie Brown King, the wife of a
friend of the Wilson's. In 1977, she told historian Arthur Link that Wilson
seemed lost in thought during the showing. He then walked out of the room
without saying a word when the movie was over. Wilson also left his program
behind where it was picked up by his friend, Dr. Grayson. The White House
physician saved the program, and in 2003 his family gave it to the Woodrow
Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia. The program appears at
some point to have been crumpled. It seems unlikely that Grayson did so,
as he normally kept his souvenirs of Wilson in good condition. Did Wilson
crumple the program as he watched the film, and if so, why? The evidence
is far too thin to reach a definite conclusion, but the questions raised by the
program are intriguing. Was Wilson angered by what he saw on the screen?
If so, why was he angry? Did the film bring up unpleasant memories? Was
he reacting to the melodramatic villains on the screen? Was he reacting to
the exciting and dramatic images? Was he as emotionally invested in the
attempted rape of a white heroine by a black man as Griffith and Dixon
intended their audiences to be? Unfortunately, Grayson made no mention of
the screening in his diaries and Mrs. Brown's recollections were recorded six
decades after the event, leaving the record ambiguous at best.15
Further weakening confidence in Mrs. Brown's account is a letter in
Wilson's papers from Griffith to Wilson dated March 2, 1915. Griffith
mentioned future films, noting that he hoped to "carry out the proposed
series of motion pictures dealing with matters historical and political, of
which I spoke to you." Wilson replied a few days later, telling Griffith, "I am
very much interested.. .in your plans with regard to future motion pictures."
Wilson promised to help in the future if he could, time permitting given his
duties as president. Clearly Wilson and Griffith had conducted a discussion
on Griffith's future plans for historical films, but did they discuss Griffith's
projects before or after Births screening?16
The night after the White House showing, the film was shown before a
other family members. According to Dixon, Margaret Wilson, who often acted as First Lady
after her mother's death, arranged for the showing. Thomas Dixon, Southern Horizons: The
Autobiography of Thomas Dixon, ed. Karen Crowe (Alexandria, VA, 1984), 298; Griffith argued
that the film's "realistic" depiction of war made his film a plea for peace.
15Marjorie Brown King's account may be found in PWW, 32:267 nl. Mrs. King was the
wife of Benjamin King, a friend of Wilson's daughters who often visited the White House.
Wilson's program from the showing is in the collection of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential
Library, Staunton, Virginia, a gift from the Grayson family. It was shown to the author by the
library's curator, Dr. Edmund Potter, in 2005. Many of Wilson's other theater programs are in
the collection of the Woodrow Wilson House, Washington, where the author served as staff
historian.
16David Wark Griffith to Woodrow Wilson, Mar. 2, 1915, PWW, 32:310-11; Wilson to
Griffith, Mar. 5,1915, PWW, 32:325.
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 515
large audience at the National Press Club. Dixon had arranged the showing
by meeting with Chief Justice Edward Douglas White. According to Dixon,
White claimed to have been a member of the Klan in New Orleans as a
young man. The chief justice approved of the showing for members at the
Press Club and attended along with thirty-eight senators, fifty representatives
and members of the Supreme Court with their families. Also in attendance
was Wilson's secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, a pro-segregration
Southerner who had facilitated Dixon's meeting with Justice White. Five
hundred people attended the screening, which was mentioned in the
Washington papers. If showing the film for a private audience at the White
House did not gain Dixon and Griffith enough political cover to show the
film nationwide, then this showing certainly made up the difference. Now
the filmmakers could point to members of all three branches of government
as having seen the film and had also gained several specific endorsements to
quote.17
Having previewed the film in Washington, Dixon and Griffith opened
The Birth of a Nation in New York City in early March. Wilson's supposed
remark about "history written with Hghtning'' did not appear in the initial
accounts of the film. However, in an interview in the Hearst newspaper New
York American, Griffith claimed that the film "received very high praise from
high quarters in Washington." Griffith also noted "I was gratified when a
man we all revere, or ought to, said it teaches history by Hghtning." While
Griffith did not specificaUy claim that it was W?son who made this remark,
his description does fit. Had he been referring to the showing before the
Supreme Court and Congress he Hkely would have said "men we aU revere"
instead of the singular "man." Moreover, Griffith was a Democrat and a
Wilson supporter. Note, however, that the quote says "teaching history." This
initial variation would soon be replaced by "writing history"18
The comment apparently did not immediately become weU-known,
because Wilson's opinion of the film was not used in advertising The Birth
of a Nation. Instead, advertising for the film used quotes from other leading
progressives including George Foster Peabody, Senator James Martine,
a New Jersey Democrat, and RepubHcan governor Hiram Johnson of
CaHfornia, Theodore Roosevelt's running mate on the Progressive Party
ticket in 1912. The remark about "writing history" was also not used in the
different pamphlets and souvenir programs issued for the movie in 1915.
As with the newspaper advertisements, endorsements from notable reHgious
and poHtical leaders were prominendy printed, including those from Dorothy
17"Movies at Press Club," Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1915; "Press Club to Witness Noted
Films," Evening Star, Feb. 19, 1915; For Dixon's account of his meeting with Chief Justice
White, see Dixon, Southern Horizons, 300-01.
i8Neiv York American, Feb. 28,1915, M9, quoted in Lennig, "Myth and Fact."
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516 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
Dix ("history vitalized and made living"), Governor Johnson ("the most
glorious accomplishment in any art I have ever seen"), and Reverend Thomas
B. Gregory ("That the story as told by the pictures is true I am ready to
swear on the Bible"). The filmmakers bragged that twenty-one members of
Congress had "sent voluntary letters of enthusiastic commendation" for the
film. However, none of the long lists of endorsements mentioned Wilson
either by name or by office. In short, neither Wilson's implied endorsement
nor his famous quotation, aside from the one oblique reference in the New
York American, appeared in any of the material during the film's opening
weeks after the White House showing.19
The failure to cite Wilson's supposed remarks direcdy may have been due to
reluctance to use the president's words in an advertisement for a controversial
commercial subject.20 While the filmmakers did not use Wilson's image or
words in their advertisements, they did use the fact that the film was shown
to Wilson in the White House as an implied endorsement. As Dixon had
hoped, the fact that Birth had been shown to Wilson as well as to Supreme
Court justices, representatives, and senators served to counter many of the
legal challenges to the film before various state censorship boards. In Boston,
it was Wilson the historian, not the president, who was used in defense of
the film. The manager of a theater that hoped to show Birth noted, "All
the historical circumstances therefore can be verified by reference to the
[historical] works of Woodrow Wilson." In a hearing before Boston mayor
James Michael Curley, a lawyer representing one of the theater owners noted
that Wilson and members of his cabinet had seen and approved of the film.
Wilson's name was booed by the largely African American crowd, probably
due to the understandable resentment toward the administration's racial
record, including establishing Jim Crow segregation in federal offices. Yet in
19Examples of the programs and pamphlets are included in Griffith's papers on microfilm
in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, reel 2. For an example of an advertisement
with the endorsement of various political and religious leaders, see "Why The Birth of a Na
tion' is Shown," Boston Globe, Apr. 9, 1915. Film historian Thomas Cripps footnotes Wilson's
quotation "history with lightning" as appearing in the New York Post, Mar. 4,1915. See Cripps,
"The Reaction of the Negro to the Motion Picture 'Birth of a Nation,'" Historian 25 (May 1963):
349. However, in reviewing the microfilm copies of the Evening Post, the paper's correct name,
at the Library of Congress, this author has not been able to locate the quotation in either the
advertisement for the movie or in an article about Birth that appeared on page 9 for the date
cited by Cripps. Nor does the quote appear in the Evening Post for any other day that month. It
also does not appear in either the Washington Post or the Boston Post.
20In contrast, Wilson apparently issued no objection in 1918 when brewer's associations in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York used his words and his image in newspaper ads oppos
ing state prohibition measures. He took no action despite pleas from prominent prohibition
leaders. However, the brewers used Wilson's words in their proper context, so he may have felt
that objecting would only create more controversy. Examples of the anti-Prohibition ads may
be found in the Woodrow Wilson Papers at the Library of Congress in the Prohibition subfile.
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 517
none of these meetings was Wilson's comment "history with Ughtning" used,
even when Griffith spoke in person.21
Even without W?son's exp?cit endorsement, however, his words could be
used to defend Birth, as Griffith had used W?son's own histories as sources.
Several tide cards in the film quote Wilson direcdy. At the beginning of the
second half of the film, the part that took place during Reconstruction, three
tide cards appeared with excerpts from Wilson's five-volume History of the
American People. The first tide card denounced the carpetbaggers who moved
South after the war:
[AJdventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the
enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile, and
use the Negroes....In the viUages the Negroes were the
office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority,
except its insolences.
The second tide card read:
The PoUcy of the congressional leaders wrought...a
veritable overthrow of civiUzation in the South....in their
determination to "put the white South under the heel of the
black South." [Emphasis added in the tide card.]
The third tide card read:
The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self
preservation... until at last there had sprung into existence
a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to
protect the Southern country.22
Griffith took some ?berties with W?son's writings in his tide cards, however,
as discussed in Melvyn Stokes's D. W. Griffiths The Birth of a Nation. The
tide cards omitted sections of W?son's writings that conflicted with Griffith's
judgments. This was especiaUy notable in the third card, the one that praised
21"Birth of a Nation'Managers Defend Play," Boston Post, Apr. 7,1915; u Birth of a Nation'to
Be Shown," Boston Post, Apr. 8, 1915. This assumes that Wilson's quotation would have been
reported in newspaper accounts, had Griffith used it. This is a reasonable assumption, given
the force of the image of "writing history with lightning."
22John Cuniberti, The Birth of a Nation: A Format Shot-by-Shot Analysis Together with Microfiche
(Woodbridge, CT, 1979), D7-D9; The original quotations appear in Woodrow Wilson, A His
tory of the American People (repr. New York, 1931), 5:50, 60. A paraphrase of the first title card
appears on 47; Griffith altered the quotation for the movie.
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518 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progresse Era / October 2010
GG
^ 4\ . . . The policy of the co
leaders wrought... a veritable
of civilization in the Sout
determination to 'put the w
under the heel of the biack So
WOODROW WILSON
.-c? OGc-?
The three title cards by director D. W. Griffith that quoted Woodrow Wilso
in The Birth of a Nation (1915). Screen captures by the author.
the Klan. As Stokes notes, Griffith took parts of sentences on dif
to make it seem that Wilson considered the Klan to be "the o
by Southern whites" rather than as part of a larger reaction, b
termed "fair means or foul."23
^Stokes, D. W. Griffith'sThe Birth of a Nation, 198-200.
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Ughming" 519
As demonstrations against Birth grew, Wilson came under increased
political pressure to denounce the movie. On March 29,1915, Joseph Tumulty
received a letter from a prominent New Yorker, Margaret Blaine Damrosch,
daughter of politician James Blaine and wife of conductor Walter Damrosch,
asking if it were true that Wilson approved of the film. The letter noted
that Birth's producer, Harry E. Aitken, claimed, "President Wilson and Chief
Justice White saw it, and saw nothing objectionable in it." Tumulty suggested
that Wilson issue "some sort of letter" showing that he did not approve
of the film. Chief Justice White told Tumulty that he wrote to Aitken and
threatened to denounce the movie publicly if they did not stop claiming that
White approved of the film. White also told Tumulty:
Incidentally in the letter I said, "I have reason to know?
although not authoritatively so?that the name of the
President also has been used and that he might perhaps be
obliged to take the same course that I have indicated if the
rumors are not stopped. I do not speak with any authority,
but only by way of rumor."24
Neither White nor Damrosch made any reference to Wilson's alleged
comment "like writing history with lightning." Instead they quoted the
colorless "saw nothing objectionable in it." This suggests that the lightning
comment, if it existed, was at the very least not then in wide circulation.
24Margaret Blaine Damrosch to Tumulty, Mar. 27, 1915, PWW, 32:455; Edward Douglas
White to Tumulty, Apr. 5,1915, PWW, 32:486-87.
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520 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
Wilson initially asked Tumulty to "please say I have expressed no opinion
about it [the film]," but the question of whether Wilson approved of the
movie remained. On April 24, Wilson told his secretary, "I would like to do
this [issue a statement]," but he did not want to seem to be "trying to meet
the agitation...stirred up by that unspeakable fellow [Trotter]." Wilson was
referring to Boston civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter, who had met
with Wilson previously to confront the president over his administration's
segregation policy. The meeting went poorly. Wilson was angered, probably
because he believed Trotter was not showing the deference due to Wilson as
a white man and president. Trotter was thrown out of Wilson's office, and
Wilson thereafter regarded him as a political enemy and as a troublemaker.25
Instead of a full denouncement of the film, Wilson issued a short statement
reading,
It is true that 'The Birth of a Nation' was produced before
the President and his family at the White House, but the
President was entirely unaware of the character of the play
before it was presented and has at no time expressed his
approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a
courtesy extended to an old acquaintance.
This rather colorless declaration was Wilson's only public statement on the
matter in 1915, but it was circulated in the African American press. The Chicago
Defender noted, "We take great pleasure in erasing one demerit mark from our
high chief." The NAACP printed a copy of the statement in a pamphlet
tided, "Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest Against The Birth of a Nation?' The
pamphlet was issued in part as a response to Birth's promoters' claim that
Wilson had seen and approved of the film. Once again, the "writing history
with lightning" quote does not direcdy appear, but the fact that the film was
screened for Wilson was seen as an implicit endorsement.26
While the "lightning" comment did not seem to be in wide circulation
in the spring of 1915, that does not mean that Wilson did not make the
statement. As noted earlier, a variation first appeared soon after the White
House showing in Griffith's New York American interview. Later in 1915,
however, the phrase "teaching history with lightning" appeared briefly. The
25Tumulty to Wilson, Mar. 29,1915, file 2247, Wilson Papers, Library of Congress; Wilson
to Tumulty, Apr. 24,1915, PWW, 33:68. Wilson's note actually read "Tucker" rather than Trot
ter, but this was most likely a mistake by Wilson's stenographer.
26Wilson to Tumulty, Apr. 28, 1915, PWW, 33:86; Wilson opposed showing Birth during
the First World War because he believed it to be divisive; NAACP, "Fighting a Vicious Film:
Protest Against The Birth of a Nation" repr. in Focus on D W. Griffith, ed. Harry M. Geduld
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971), 101-02; Chicago Defender, May 8,1915.
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Benboiv / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 521
first appearance appears to have been in the Atlanta Constitution on December
12, 1915, in an advertisement for the film. The advertisement included the
line, "Persons saw history written with Hghtning at the Atlanta theater last
week." On December 15, the same newspaper noted, '"History written with
lightning' is the description applied to The Birth of a Nation, now in its second
week at the Adanta theater, by a very eminent man for whom a private
exhibition was given in Washington some months ago." A third version of
the same quote appeared in late 1916 when Photoplay Magazine published a
multipart biography and interview of Griffith. In the October issue, Griffith
spoke about the controversy over Birth of a Nation and noted:
They have told us repeatedly that the motion picture can
impress upon a people as much of the truth of history in
an evening as many months of study will accomplish. As
one eminent divine said of pictures, "They teach history by
lightning."27
Was this quote from Wilson? Wilson was a well-respected historian and
political scientist as well as president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910, so
he could easily be considered an "eminent divine." Griffith's version of
the quotation used the word "teaching" rather than "writing." The Adanta
quotes, however, are fairly close, and the advertisements include the added
detail that the film was seen "by a very eminent man for whom a private
exhibition was given in Washington some months ago."
The "lightning" portion of the quote is especially interesting as it echoes
some comments Wilson made earlier. While still an active historian in the
late 1800s, he wrote an essay comparing Thomas Carlyle's writings to seeing
history by "flashes of Hghtning." In Mere Literature (1896), Wilson wrote
in a discussion of the place of wit in historical writing, "It is the summer
Hghtning, which w?l bring more to your starded eye in an instant, out of the
hiding of the night, than you will ever be at the pains to observe in the fuU
blaze of noon."28
In none of the pubHshed 1915 references to history written or taught "by
Hghtning" did the second part of Wilson's reported quotation appear: "My
only regret is that it is aU so terribly true." The fuU quotation first appeared
21 Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 12, 1915; "At the Theaters," Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 15, 1915;
Henry Stephen Gordon, "The Story of David Wark Griffith, Part V," Photoplay Magazine, Oct.
1916, 93. Note that Griffith refers to "pictures" rather than to one specific film.
28Many thanks to the anonymous reader who pointed me in this direction and who provided
me with specific examples; Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature and Other Essays (Boston, 1900),
101; Wilson, however, dismissed Carlyle, noting "the whole matter of what he writes is too
dramatic." Wilson, "On the Writing of History," June 17,1895, PWW, 9:299.
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522 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
19,759?Persona saw history written with lightning at the Atlanta theater last week.
?They laughed, they shouted and they gasped.
?And through it all they shed hot, slippery tears.
?Never before such ecenes in an Atlanta playhouse; never such tumult nor
so many damp 'kerchiefs.
-ASK ANY OF THEM!
?Those who have regained their voices will tell you that you'll regret it to
your dying day if you fail to witness
D.W.GRIFFITH'S
you will
, ? ?-3,000 Hor?ee-5,000 Soor???
?Petersburg at the height of battle.
?Lee and Grant at Appomattoz.
?The shot that killed Abraham Lincoln.
?The pillaging of Atlanta by Sherman's invaders.
YOU VrVIL-L. HEAR
?A splendid symphony orchestra of thirty play the best-loved melodies of the
Southland.
?Roaring cannon, sputtering machine guns, rushing cavalry and clashing
bayonets in the mad stampede of battle.
Voci will f"ee:l.?The spirit of '61,
?The hot surging patriotism that drove your grandfather to don a suit of gray.
?The pang of sweethearts parted and the anguish of wives and mothers
bereaved.
?And above it all a glow of undying pride that they're YOUR stars and
YOUR bars.
12 MORE PERFORMANCES
?To relieve the disappointment of hundreds turned away et the week-end performances, the engage
ment ha* been extended until next Saturday, Inclusive. Twice dally at 2:30 and ?: 15 the spectacle
wilt be shown all next week, beginning Monday afternoon, and seats for the twelve additional perform
ances went on sale yesterday morning.
?THEY'RE GOING FAST.
?SO YOU'D BETTER HURRY.
BOX OFFICE OPEN FROM 9A.M. UNTIL 9 P.M.
NIGHTS?Best Orchestra Seats $2; Ot ers at 75c, $1 and
$1.50. Gallery 50c MATINEES?Best Orchestra Seats
$1; Others at 50c and 75c. Gallery 25c.
You can get the seats you want if you buy early. No Phone Reservations.
SPECIAI?"The Birth of a Nation" will positively never be presented except at the important theatersat regular prices?O. W. Griffith.
PRICES:
Advertisement for
The Birth of a Na
tion. The phrase,
"Persons saw his
tory written with
lightning," appears
in the first line at the
top under "19,759."
Reprinted from the
Atlanta Constitution,
Dec. 12, 1915.
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 523
in 1937 in an article by journalist and writer Milton MacKaye in Scribners
Magazine that described Birth as "accurate enough but one-sided" and not as
much an "indictment" of blacks as it was sometimes portrayed. The article
concludes with the story of Wilson rising after the movie is over, wiping his
eyes and remarking, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only
regret is that it is all so terribly true." The first part of the quotation appears
again in 1939 in Lewis Jacobs's The Rise of the American Film Industry. Once
again, the source of the remark is not specified. Jacobs simply noted that
"President Wilson is said to have remarked. . . "29
These two citations?from MacKaye and Jacobs?are the most frequendy
cited after 1939. The quote also appears in some memoirs. Lillian Gish, who
played Elsie Stoneman in the movie, claimed that Wilson said, "It is like
writing history with lightning, and it's all too true." However, Gish was not
present at the White House screening, and she wrote the account decades
after the fact. Moreover, she changes the second part of Wilson's supposed
words somewhat, leaving out the phrase "and my only regret." Births financial
backer, Roy Aitken, also claimed in a memoir of the movie that Wilson made
the remark. Aitken was at the White House showing, but he also erroneously
notes that the Supreme Court justices were present. In both cases, it appears
that the authors' memories faded over the years, which is certainly normal.
However, it places the accuracy of their accounts in doubt.30
The most important account of Wilson making the statement comes
from Thomas Dixon, but even here there is considerable room for doubt.
In his memoirs, Southern Horizons, published after his death, Dixon does not
quote any statement from Wilson, noting only that he congratulated Griffith
and Dixon. However, Dixon's widow later claimed that Dixon told her that
Wilson made the statement, but that a section discussing the screening had
been removed from Dixon's draft by a historian doing research. Moreover,
this information came from Dixon's second wife, whom he married in 1939,
long after the 1915 screening. She was a longtime fan and friend of Dixon,
but Mrs. Dixon's account is still little better than the other secondary accounts
by friends and family of the participants.31 The quotation does not appear in
Dixon's last novel, The Flaming Sword, published in 1939. The Flaming Sword
contains a fictionalized account of Dixon's meeting with Wilson and of
the White House and Supreme Court viewings. Dixon wrote, "No opinion
was asked of the President and under no circumstances would it have been
29M?ton MacKaye, "The Birth of a Nation" Scribners, Nov. 1937, 46, 69; Lewis Jacobs, The
Rise of the American Film (New York, 1939), 175.
30Lillian Gish with Ann Pinchot, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1969),
6; Roy E. Aitken, The Birth of a Nation Story (Middleburg, VA, 1965), 154.
31James Zebulon Wright, "Thomas Dixon: The Mind of a Southern Apologist" (PhD diss.,
George Peabody College for Teachers, 1966), 202.
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524 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Ura / October 2010
quoted after the understanding about publicity." This account would have been
a logical place for Dixon to quote any praise from Wilson, but he did not do so.32
Even if the question remains open of whether or not Wilson made the
reported remark, historians can also judge from the content of the film and
how it matched Wilson's views. If Wilson had not agreed with the film's
interpretation, it is unlikely he would have claimed that it was "writing
history" or that it was "all so terribly true." Here the record is clearer.
Dixon and Griffith's view was not far from Wilson's, but there were some
critical differences. In The Crucible of Race, Joel Williamson divides the
Southern attitude towards race into three general schools of thought: liberal,
conservative, and radical. The liberals were the smallest of the three groups
and the most optimistic about the future role of blacks in the United States.
The liberals were impressed with the progress that blacks had made in the
South during Reconstruction and believed that the North had abandoned
black Southerners before they had been able achieve lasting equality. Neither
Wilson, Dixon, nor Griffith fit into this school. Wilson was probably the
closest to it because he did not assume that black inferiority was an everlasting
status, although he did assume that black advancement was set so long into
an indeterminate future that, for all practical purposes, black inferiority was
permanent.33
The conservatives assumed that white supremacy was permanent.
Following the Dunning School, named after Columbia University professor
William Dunning, the race problem for conservatives was one of defining
the degree of black inferiority and setting society's rules to recognize that
status. As Williamson notes, "Place was the vital word in the vocabulary
of Conservatives, and it applied to whites as well as blacks." To the racial
conservative, Reconstruction was unsuccessful not because the North had
abandoned the blacks, as in the liberal view, but because it upset the natural
order of society. As one uncited source in Wilson's History of the American
People put it, Reconstruction "put the white South under the heel of the
black South."34 It placed natural superiors under their inferiors. Once the
situation was corrected, and the races restored to their rightful places in the
racial hierarchy, then peace was restored. Williamson places both Wilson
and Griffith into this school with some justification. Wilson agreed with the
conservative view on Reconstruction in his books, and Griffith used Wilson's
32Dixon, Flaming S word, 206.
33Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race (New York, 1984), 5-6; The judgment of Wilson is my
own, not Williamson's. Williamson placed Wilson squarely in the ranks of the conservatives.
See also Gary Gerstle, "Race and Nation in the Thought and Politics of Woodrow Wilson,"
Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson: Progressivism, Internationalism, War and Peace, ed. John Milton Coo
per Jr. (Washington, 2008), 105-06.
34Wilson, History, 5:50.
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 525
historical writing in his research in making Birth, although he rephrased
Wilson's judgments, especially in regard to the Klan.35
In Williamson's model, Dixon clearly counted as a radical white supremacist.
Indeed, Williamson notes that Dixon's novels The Leopards Spots and The
Clansman exemplified the radical mindset. In Dixon's view, since the ending
of slavery blacks had regressed. They were unable to be truly civilized and
not only occupied a permanent place as racial inferiors but actually posed a
danger to whites and to the United States. Dixon was convinced that every
black male desired sex with white women in order to "mongrelize" the races.
Dixon made his career as a novelist, playwright and speaker spreading this
message, which only grew more urgent as time passed.36
Dixon was convinced that the United States could not survive as a
democracy so long as blacks remained in the country. His solution was to
deport every black American (and presumably every person of mixed race) to
Africa to form a new country there. Part of his reason for writing the novels
that led to The Birth of a Nation was to raise white Americans' awareness
of what Dixon saw as an intractable problem. To a radical like Dixon, the
conservatives were na?ve in assuming that education and segregation could
preserve the social order. Griffith may have agreed at least in part, as the early
version of Birth included a scene labeled "Lincoln's vision" in which black
Americans were being led to ships to be sent back to Africa. The short scene
was deleted before the film reached wide distribution but may still have been
part of the movie when Wilson viewed it.37
Although Dixon admired Wilson, there were differences in not only their
attitudes toward blacks, but in their view of the Civil War. Dixon blamed
abolitionists and the slaves themselves for the war. The abolitionists, in
Dixon's view, stirred up the slaves and split the nation along ideological lines
until a war was inevitable. Slavery was unfortunate in Dixon's mind, but it was
the "kindest" slavery ever known, and besides, Dixon claimed, most Africans
were slaves anyway, held in thrall by despotic witch doctors.38
In contrast, Wilson wrote one of the first ostensibly unbiased accounts
of the Civil War, Division and Reunion, published in 1893. Wilson's book was
generally well-received, although some reviewers in both the North and
the South felt he had taken sides. Wilson's interpretation was based on the
assumption that both Northern and Southern partisans were in error and
35Williamson, Crucible, 6.
36Ibid.
37John David Smith, '"My Books Are Hard Reading for a Negro': Tom Dixon and His
African American Critics, 1905-1939" in Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America, eds.
Michele . Gillespie and Randal L. Hall, (Baton Rouge, 2006), 59-60. The deportation scene
was mentioned in the 1915 NAACP pamphlet "Fighting a Vicious Film."
38Williamson, Crucible, 279.
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526 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
so that, in Hegelian fashion, the truth could be found somewhere in the
middle. It seems not to have occurred to Wilson that one narrative might
be closer to the truth than the other. The result was an account of the Civil
War that claimed that the North was correct in 1860 about the unbreakable
nature of the American Union but that the Southern view of the United
States as a league of independent states, while outdated by the middle of
the nineteenth century, had nonetheless been correct when the union was
founded. The South, Wilson wrote, "had stood still while the rest of the
country had undergone profound changes; and, standing still, she retained
the old principles which had once been universal."39
Slavery had a role in Wilson's narrative, but he downplayed the institution's
cruelty and emphasized its economic inefficiency. Slavery, in Wilson's view,
was harshest in the border states, where owners feared that their slaves
might try to escape. Farther south, however, "the greater part of the slave
owners were humane in the treatment of their slaves?kind, indulgent, not
over-exacting, and sincerely interested in the physical well-being of their
dependents." Certainly, in contrast to Dixon, he did not blame the slaves
themselves for the war.40
Unlike Dixon, Wilson did not portray the Reconstruction Klan as
unmitigated heroes. As noted above, Birth used some of Wilson's words from
his History of the American People to justify the Klan's existence. "The white
men of the South," Wilson wrote, "were aroused by the mere instinct of
self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable
burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant Negroes." Wilson
credited the Klan with acting to frighten blacks into submission, writing, "It
threw the Negroes into a very ecstasy of panic to see these sheeted cKu Klux'
move near them in the shrouded night; and their comic fear stimulated the
lads who excited it to many extravagant prank and mummery," a scene copied
in Birth when Ben Cameron takes the idea of dressing the Klan members in
white sheets from watching some white children frighten black children. As
for the Klan's violence, Wilson saw it as a natural result of the Klan's mission:
"It was impossible to keep such power in hand. Sober men governed the
counsels and moderated the plans of these roving knights errant; but it was
lawless work at best." Wilson's final judgment of the Klan, however, was not
one with which Dixon would have agreed. "Brutal crimes were committed,"
Wilson noted, "the innocent suffered with the guilty; a reign of terror was
brought on, and society was infinitely more disturbed than defended." In short,
Wilson's Klan was not as heroic as in Dixon's books and The Birth of a NationA
39Woodrow W?son, Division and Reunion, 1829-1889 (New York, 1901), 211-12.
40W?son, Division, 125-27.
^Wilson, History, 5: 58-64, 74?75; The difference can be seen in their views of Uncle Tom's
Cabin. Dixon thought it a lie, Wilson thought it an exaggeration taken from isolated cases. For
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 527
Wilson promoted the moderate Southern narrative of the Civil War and
Reconstruction in a way that made it acceptable to Northern and Southern
readers who desired national reconciliation. Standing in contrast to the
remaining defenders of slavery and the still emotionally powerful Oncle Toms
Cabin narrative, Wilson's account seemed to be an acceptable middle ground.
This view fit Griffith's ideas and indeed, that of much of the country in
1915, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Civil War. The anniversary
was celebrated by reunions and the dedication of monuments to both sides
of the conflict, events that mosdy excluded blacks and ignored the African
American role in the war itself. Significantly, the climax of Birth includes
Union and Confederate veterans fighting side by side against rampaging
blacks and the rescue by the Klan of a Northern white woman who then
marries the head of the local Klan.
To return to the original question, did Wilson make the remark, "It is like
writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly
true"? The second portion of the quote, "my only regret" is most likely a
latter addition and not Wilson's words. This part of the comment did not
appear until decades after the initial release of Birth, and the best source for
the remark seems to be the account of Dixon's widow, who did not marry
Dixon until late in his life. There simply is insufficient evidence to support
Wilson's having made this part of the remark.
The first part of the quotation, "It is like writing history with lightning,"
is better supported by the evidence. A variation appeared soon after the
White House screening and can be directly traced to Griffith, who was
present with Wilson. Griffith reported the phrase as "teaching" in 1915, and
given Wilson's career as a professor and university president, this phrasing
sounds more accurate. Moreover, Wilson was interested in the use of film
as an educational tool. His campaign in 1912 created the first real campaign
film to enlist supporters, and during the First World War, Wilson created
the Committee on Public Information (the Creel Committee), which used,
among other tools, propaganda films to sell the public on the war effort.
Contemporary accounts of The Birth of a Nation, both favorable and critical,
agree that the film had a tremendous emotional impact on its audience.
Wilson could not have failed to be impressed by Birth's power and most likely
realized how effective a tool it was for presenting Dixon and Griffith's vision.
The use of the term "written" appeared later in 1915, so it can not be entirely
eliminated from contention as Wilson's actual comment, but it appears as
if "teaching" was turned into "writing" in advertisements for the movie,
perhaps to make the film more appealing. Audiences generally did not go to
the movies to be taught, but rather to be entertained, and the word "written"
Ben Cameron's watching the children see The Birth of a Nation, shots 914-24.
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528 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
fits this motive better.
What of Marjorie King's account that Wilson said nothing? Like the
version told by Mrs. Dixon, this account came decades later, so her memory
may simply have been distorted by the passage of time. It is also possible that
Wilson made his comment quickly to Griffith and then left without Mrs. King
hearing it. Alternatively, Wilson may have discussed the film with Griffith
before the screening as well. Moreover, when Mrs. King gave her account
in 1977, The Birth of a Nation was infamous for its racism, and she may not
have wanted Wilson to be any more associated with it than he was already.
Mrs. King's testimony is simply insufficient to rule out Wilson's having made
a comment after the screening was over.
Did Wilson then make this quoted remark? While we will never know for
certain, I believe that Wilson did make a comment to Griffith that film would
be useful as a teaching tool, that it could "teach history by lightning." He
may have made the comment before the screening rather than after, which
would fit Mrs. King's account and still allow for Griffith's later letters to
Wilson remarking on their conversation. The full comment, as so commonly
quoted, evolved from there. The latter portion, "my only regret is that it is
all too terribly true," may well have been Dixon's invention. Dixon had a
vivid imagination when it came to race. One need only read his continued
insistence that Booker T. Washington was intent on social equality to get a
sense of how Dixon fit his view of the world to meet his racial expectations.
He defended The Birth of a Nation in later writings, such as his novel The
Flaming Sword, which ended with an African American communist army
taking over the United States. He insisted that Birth was historically accurate,
and both Dixon and Griffith bragged about how much research they had
done, including using Wilson's books. However, the evidence trail for the
full quotation simply does not extend earlier than 1937. Moreover, the full
remark was too quotable to have been ignored by the many press accounts
published during 1915-16, had it been known.
Where does this leave the historian? Wilson never gave an overt, open
endorsement of The Birth of a Nation. He agreed with most of the views
expressed in the movie but not the more radical ones, such as the deportation
of American blacks to Africa. Nor did he agree with Dixon, who thought that
the mere presence of African Americans in the United States was intolerable,
even in a subservient position. Moreover, Wilson did not hold the Klan in
as high a regard as did Dixon or Griffith. The film did, however, accurately
portray Wilson's view of Reconstruction as a disorderly time when white
Southerners were denied their civil rights. Dixon and Wilson both blamed
radical congressional Republicans, who in Wilson's words "were proof
against both fact and reason in their determination to 'put the white South
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 529
under the heel of the black South.'"
More important than whatever was said or not said, Wilson gave the
filmmakers all the endorsement they needed by agreeing to view the film in
the White House. In Griffith's words, by viewing the film in the White House,
Wilson "conferred" an "honor" upon The Birth of a Nation. The screening
was in itself a tacit endorsement sufficient to protect the film from censors
and to allow it to be shown around the country. While the film probably
would have been a hit even if Wilson had never seen it, his viewing it made
the filmmakers' task easier. Moreover, Wilson's other racist policies, such as
introducing Jim Crow to the federal government, are enough to place his
administration in the bottom tier of presidencies for civil rights and race
relations. Apocryphal quotations are simply not needed for the historian to
illustrate Woodrow Wilson's policies on race when the facts are sufficient.42
* * * *
Appendix: Sources
with Lightning"
This list shows nin
they have appeared
contemporary accou
by historians. The fir
variations listed in or
I: Quote Variation
1) "It is like writing
so terribly true."
Roy E. Aitken, The
was present at the s
White House with t
Raymond Allen Coo
Cook wrote this ad
then unpublished me
source.
Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black (New York, 1977), 52. Cripps cites two
sources: a conversation in 1962 with Dixon's widow and Cook, Fire from
42Griffith to W?son, Mar. 2,1915, PWWf 32:310-11.
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530 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
the Flint. He also changes the quotation slightly from his 1963 article. (See
variation 6, below.)
Arthur Link, ed. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, 1980), 32:267.
Link discusses the controversy over the lightning quotation in the footnotes
for the correspondence in the Wilson papers relating to the White House
showing. Link, however, casts doubt on the accuracy of the quotation, noting
that it did not appear until 1937 and that Dixon did not mention the remark
in Southern Horizons. Link apparendy did not know about the shorter variation
attributed to Griffith in 1915 and 1916 (see variations 7 and 8, below).
Milton MacKaye, 'The Birth of a Nation" Scrihners Magazine, Nov. 1937, 69.
No source is listed.
Richard Schickel, D W. Griffith: An American Ufe (New York, 1984). The
standard biography of Griffith. Schickel cites Cripps's Slow Fade to Black as
his source.
Anthony Slide, American Racist: The Ufe and Films of Thomas Dixon (Lexington,
KY, 2004), 83.
2) "It is like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so
terribly true."
Russell Merritt, "Dixon, Griffith, and the Southern Legend," Cinema Journal
12 (Fall 1972): 28. Mistakenly sourced to New York Post, March 4, 1915, as
explained below.
3) "writing history with lightning.. .my only regret is that it is all too true."
Arthur Lennig, "Myth and Fact: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation/' Film
History 16 (Apr. 2004): 119. Lennig notes that the quotation's "provenance
remains hazy." Lennig paraphrases the quotation in his article.
4) "It is like history written with lightning"
Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New York 1939), 175. Jacobs
writes, "Wilson is said to have remarked. . . ." No source is listed.
5) "History written with lightning"
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Benbow / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 531
Advertisement, Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 12, 1915. No attribution given.
The full line reads "Persons saw history written with lightning at the Adanta
theater last week."
"At the Movies," Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 15, 1915. Attributed to "a very
eminent man for whom a private exhibition was given in Washington some
months ago."
6) "History written in Hghtning"
Thomas Cripps, "The Reaction of the Negro to the Motion Picture Birth of
a Nation" Historian 25 (May 1963): 349. Cripps is commonly referenced by
other authors. He credits four sources:
A conversation with Dixon's widow in 1962, along with a letter
to him from Mrs. Dixon.
A draft of Southern Horizons in Mrs. Dixon's possession.
The New York Post, March 4, 1915, apparendy a mistaken
attribution, as explained below.
Cripps also notes that the source is cited in Eric Goldman,
Rendezvous with Destiny (New York, 1956), 176-77', and Arthur
Knight, The Liveliest Art (New York, 1959), 35. Goldman,
however, only notes that Wilson was "enthusiastic." Knight
quotes Wilson as saying, "like writing history in Hghtning," but
does not Hst his source.
Cripps used Dixon's widow as a source, but not the New York
Post, in his 1984 book Slow Fade to Blacky Usted above under
variation 1.
7) "They teach history by lightning"
David Wark Griffith, interview with Photoplay Magagne, Oct. 1916,93. Griffith
credits this remark to "an eminent divine."
8) "It teaches history by lightning"
David Wark Griffith, New York American, Feb. 28,1915, M9. Griffith attributes
the quotation to "a man we all revere, or ought to" and mentions that Birth
"received very high praise from high quarters in Washington." The first part
seems to refer to Wilson, while the "high quarters" could also apply to the
Supreme Court justices, senators, and representatives who saw the film in
addition to Wilson.
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532 journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2010
9) "seeing history by flashes of lightning"
Karl Brown, Adventures with D. W. Griffith (New York, 1973), 97. Griffith's
cameraman's account. He did not attend the White House showing and
paraphrases the remark.
II: Mistakenly Attributed
New York Post, March 4, 1915. The New York Evening Post is often attributed
as a source for different versions of the quotation, but this appears to be a
mistake. A careful review of microfilm copies of the paper for February and
March 1915 does not show the quotation as having appeared. It also does not
appear in either the Boston Post or the Washington Post.
Ill: Where the Quotation Does Not Appear
The quote does not appear in these sources. They are listed because they
discuss Wilson and the White House showing of The Birth of a Nation or
might otherwise be expected to include Wilson's remarks.
Linda Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young (New York, 1925). Arvidson was
Griffith's first wife. However, the book ends with The Birth of a Nation, and
she barely discusses the film.
Thomas Dixon, Southern Horizons: The Autobiography of Thomas Dixon, ed.
Karen Crowe (Alexandria, VA, 1984) (probably written in 1934). According
to James Zebulon Wright's account of his conversations in the 1960s with
Dixon's widow, only a shortened version of the manuscript was available.
Wright notes that Mrs. Dixon claimed other researchers had stolen pages
relevant to Birth. See Wright, "Thomas Dixon: The Mind of a Southern
Apologist" (PhD diss., George Peabody College for Teachers, 1966), 202.
Anthony Slide, American Racist: The Ufe and Films of Thomas Dixon (Lexington,
KY, 2004), 216, suggests that Mrs. Dixon herself destroyed some pages.
David Wark Griffith with James Hart, The Man Who Invented Hollywood
(Louisville, 1972). A shortened version of Griffith's unpublished memoirs
edited by James Hart into a coffee table book format.
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BenboiP / "Like Writing History with Lightning" 533
Arthur Link, Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton, 1956). Link discussed the
showing of Birth at the White House on pages 252-54. He does not mention
the lightning quote and defends Wilson as having fallen into "Dixon's trap."
Later, Link did discuss the issue in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (see above).
Seymour Stern, "Griffith I: The Birth of a Nation" Film Culture 36 (Spring
Summer 1965): 1-210. Stern spent his career defending and studying Griffith,
but his eccentric views?he was convinced that "Stalinists" were responsible
for persecuting Griffith?make his analysis unreliable. His dedication to
documenting the filming of Birth provides useful details for later historians.
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