Fort Towson

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I know a lot of people consider this a western, but it is set in Virginia. How did it come to be considered a western? Because they ride horses in the movie? DMorpheus (talk) 19:51, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shenandoah (valley and mountain) is in western Virginia on what was considered the frontier. Seriously, the recent Hatfields & McCoys is sometimes labelled a Western, set in the Tug Fork area between Kentucky and further western Virginia. --Naaman Brown (talk) 12:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Virginia hadn't been the frontier for a loooooooong time by 1861. Texas, Kansas and California were already states. I don't buy it. 98.101.227.58 (talk) 00:21, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The introductory comments about this film being a statement reflecting negative American attitudes toward the Vietnam War is a poor reading of history. The beginning of the American ground war in Vietnam is generally considred to be March 8, 1965, when 3,500 United States Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam. And U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment. Anti-war sentiments were still several years away. Dhalgren195 (talk) 13:50, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

hello:) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.80.73.36 (talk) 16:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shenandoah was written by James Lee Barrett, who was born in North Carolina, who served in the USMC, who also wrote The Green Berets. Yep, exactly the person to write an anti-VietNam War movie disguised as an anti-Civil War movie (unh?). I think the "anti-Vietnam War" commentary misreads the history of both the VietNam war and the American Civil War (if I wanted to be pedantic about I could invoke WP:SYN, WP:OR and WP:AZATHOTH on the anti-Vietnam War analysis). There was a lot of anti-war sentiment in the Appalachians among largely self-sufficient farmers and lumberers who wanted no part of a war between industrial North and plantation South. This was especially notable in western Virginia and eastern Tennessee where there was strong support for the Union cause even tho' their states were part of the Confederacy. Families were split, some like the famous McCoys had members who served on both Union and Confederate sides; others wanted nothing to do with a war imposed by governments that had never benefited them (people went to the mountains to escape oppression or discrimination on the coasts where government was strongest). In the early 1960s I visited often with my great-grandmother who grew up in the region and who in the 1890s knew family affected by the Civil War. I was taken by a family member who had business with a local lawyer and I was fascinated by his diorama of the Battle of Kingsport. He was researching a book on the Civil War and gave me a broad view of sentiment about the Civil War that matched what my great-grandmother told me and which was echoed by the themes of Shenandoah a bit later. I believe Shenandoah became anti-Viet Nam war only in retrospect. Of course that is SYN and OR on my part. A similar themed movie was 1961's The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come which played locally before Shenandoah. --Naaman Brown (talk) 11:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Concur. I see nothing anti-Vietnam about this war, especially as it was made before the principal US involvement. The message I get, having seen it many times and watching it right now is the unavoidability of war -- to quote Trotsky "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you!" 98.101.227.58 (talk) 00:23, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The part of 'Gabriel' was played by Eugene Jackson Jnr. and not his father Eugene Jackson (Snr) who lived between 1916 and 2001 and quite clearly was not the young actor in 1965) (he would have been about 49, much older than the 'Gabriel' actor (his son) in the film. Eugene Jackson Jnr. does not currently have a page on Wikipedia).—Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.233.57 (talk) 19:47, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]