Birth of a Nation (1915)

Starring:

• Henry B. Walthall
• Lillian Gish
• Mae Marsh
• Miriam Cooper
• Mary Alden
• Ralph Lewis
• George Siegmann
• Walter Long
• Robert Harron
• Wallace Reid
• Joseph Henabery

Storyline
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans, and Southern landowners the Camerons intertwine in director D.W. Griffith's controversial Civil War epic. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall) is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish) petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron found the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father (Ralph Lewis) and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch (George Siegmann).