North South Civil War Collection

Description

North and South is the title of three American television miniseries broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company network in 1985, 1986, and 1994. Set before, during, and immediately after the American Civil War, they are based on the 1980s trilogy of novels North and South by John Jakes.

The 1985 first installment, North and South, remains the seventh-highest rated miniseries in TV history.

North and South: Book II (1986) was met with similar success, while 1994’s Heaven and Hell: North and South Book III was poorly received by both critics and audiences.The saga tells the story of the enduring friendship between Orry Main of South Carolina (Patrick Swayze)

and George Hazard of Pennsylvania (James Read), who become best friends while attending the United States Military Academy at West Point but later find themselves and their families on opposite sides of the war.

The slave-owning Mains are rural planters from outside Charleston, South Carolina, while the Hazards, who reside in a small Pennsylvania mill town, profit from ownership of iron manufacturing and industry capital, their differences reflecting the divisions between North and South that eventually led to the Civil War.

• Episode 1 summer 1842 – summer 1844)  Young Southerner Orry Main, the second born son of a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner, decides to go to West Point. On his way to the train station, he rescues and falls in love with the beautiful French–Creole southern belle from New Orleans, Madeline Fabray. In New York City, Orry meets Northerner George Hazard, the second son of a wealthy Pennsylvania ironworks owner, who is also on his way to West Point. They quickly become close friends. At the Academy, they meet classmates George Pickett, George McClellan, Thomas « Stonewall » Jackson and a senior student named Ulysses Grant. They also meet the amoral egomaniac Elkanah Bent, a fellow cadet from Georgia. Bent is a handsome, smooth-talking man who hides his evil, twisted nature beneath his charm and good looks. He takes an instant dislike to Orry and George and uses his status as their drillmaster to constantly harass them. Orry constantly writes letters to Madeline, although it seems that she has not been responding to him. After two years of training, the men return home for a summer leave. George’s sister, Virgilia, is a passionate abolitionist and immediately takes a dislike to Orry when she finds out that his family keeps slaves. While at home, Orry is devastated to learn that Madeline is marrying his cruel neighbor, plantation owner Justin LaMotte. Orry has an argument with his father over the hiring of the brutal and sadistic Salem Jones as the plantation’s overseer. Orry stops Jones from using a bullwhip to « punish » one of the slaves, sparking a tense relationship between the two. After Orry witnesses Madeline’s marriage, they privately speak to each other afterwards and find out that Madeline’s father has been hiding Orry’s letters to ensure that she would marry Justin. That night, Justin hits and rapes Madeline, leaving her broken.
• Episode 2 (autumn 1844 – spring 1848) – Bent continues his cruelty toward George, Orry, and their friends. The men, with some help from other cadets, arrange for Bent to be caught with a prostitute and he is forced to leave the Academy. When Bent learns that Orry and George were involved, he vows revenge. George and Orry graduate from West Point two years later. They leave to fight in the Mexican War. During the Battle of Churubusco, Bent, who has blackmailed his father (Bent is an illegitimate son of a US senator) in order to obtain a superior rank, orders George and Orry to lead a suicidal charge against the Mexican forces. Both men survive, but Orry is shot in his left leg and permanently crippled. Meanwhile, George meets Constance Flynn, the Irish Catholic daughter of an Army surgeon, and falls in love. They plan to marry. Orry drowns his sorrows in alcoholism. With the Mexican War over, George quits the army, finds Bent, and beats him, threatening to kill him if he ever tries to harm him or Orry again. Traumatized by his injuries, Orry temporarily becomes a recluse. When Madeline helps Priam, one of Orry’s slaves, escape, one of the other slaves gets whipped for helping Priam.
• Episode 3 (spring 1848 – summer 1854) George marries Constance and Orry is his best man. Orry and Madeline become secret lovers. A terrible fire erupts at Hazard Iron and kills many of the workers due to George’s older brother, Stanley, making a greedy decision. All authority over Hazard Iron is handed to George, greatly displeasing Stanley and his wife, Isabel. Orry’s father dies five years later, leaving Orry to inherit the family plantation. His first act is to fire the brutal Salem Jones as overseer. Jones vows revenge. Orry’s cousin Charles, who does not have good relations with the Main family, is challenged to a pistol duel in a dispute over an engaged woman. Orry, as Charles’ second, begrudgingly helps Charles to survive the duel and they become close. The Mains visit the Hazards in Pennsylvania. Orry’s sister Ashton purposely courts George’s younger brother Billy, whom Brett has come to fancy. Billy and Charles plan to attend West Point together, just as Orry and George did. Orry and George begin a partnership cotton mill at Orry’s plantation in South Carolina; they do so on George’s condition that Orry not use slave labor in the mill. Virgilia is furious that her family has allowed slave owners into their house and tries to humiliate them, angering the rest of her family.
• Episode 4 (summer 1854 – autumn 1856) – The Hazards visit the Mains in South Carolina. Billy discovers how selfish and seductive Ashton can be and falls in love with Ashton’s younger and kinder sister, Brett, much to Ashton’s jealousy. George’s sister Virgilia enters a passionate relationship with Grady, the proud and aggressive coachman of James Huntoon, an ambitious but easily manipulated South Carolina politician, who is also a strong suitor of Ashton, and helps Grady escape from slavery. Ashton, however, becomes aware of Virgilia’s involvement and informs James, as well as announcing it in the Hazard family’s presence. On his deathbed, Madeline’s father tells her that her maternal great-grandmother was black. Billy and Charles graduate from West Point, and both families attend the graduation. Ashton sleeps with many of Billy’s friends, still bitter over his rejection and attraction to Brett, which Charles is furious to discover, but keeps secret for the family’s sake. Ashton gets pregnant and begs Madeline for help, who takes her to a local midwife to perform a secret abortion. When Madeline lies to Justin about where she was when she was away helping Ashton, he beats Madeline, locks her in a spare bedroom to starve, and kills Maum Sally for trying to help Madeline escape.
• Episode 5 (spring 1857 – November 1860) – Madeline is drugged by Justin into becoming robotic and submissive and disappears from society, even forgetting her love for Orry. Ashton marries James Huntoon, though she doesn’t plan on being a committed wife. Elkanah Bent befriends James Huntoon, and subtly interrogates him at a brothel about the people in his wedding picture, including Orry, Ashton, and Madeline. Bent recognizes the resemblance between Madeline and the painting of a former popular prostitute that worked there. Orry visits George, but Virgilia’s views cause a serious argument to ensue over the issue of slavery. Orry does not want Brett to marry Billy because of the growing tensions between the North and South. Virgilia and Grady both join abolitionist leader John Brown. In 1859, Brown makes his famous raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, to arm and free the slaves there. The U.S. Army stops the raid, Virgilia’s husband Grady and Priam are killed, and Brown is captured. Virgilia escapes, but is more bitter than ever towards Southerners. Abraham Lincoln is elected president; several Southern states make plans to secede from the U.S. and establish themselves as a separate nation.
• Episode 6 (November 6, 1860 – April 1861) – Having argued with Orry, now a bitter drunk, Brett has fled to Ashton’s house in Charleston and runs into Billy, who is stationed at Fort Sumter. Ashton, however, still holds a grudge against Billy and conspires with Justin’s nephew and her lover, Forbes LaMotte, to harm them both. George visits Orry and the two apologize to each other after years of estrangement. Orry gives Brett his blessing to marry Billy. South Carolina secedes from the Union, infuriating Orry. Ashton schemes to have Billy killed, partly out of jealousy, and partly because Billy is now a « Yankee » enemy in the eyes of the South. She fails, however, due to a drugged Madeline, who overhears Justin and Forbes discussing it. Her memories come back and she runs to inform Orry after slashing Justin’s left eye with a sword, blinding and scarring him in the process. After stopping Billy and Brett on their way to the train station, Forbes provokes Billy into a rigged pistol duel, which turns into a full-fledged fight after Charles arrives, resulting in Forbes’ death. Orry is enraged at Ashton for her part in trying to destroy the new friendship between the two families with the Hazards as in-laws through Billy and disowns her, with her vowing revenge, seeing Orry as a traitor to the new Confederacy because of his friendship with the « Yankee » Hazards. Justin comes looking for Madeline, as she has taken refuge with Orry at Mont Royal, but is forced to leave with a warning. Now off the drugs and with her memories returned, Madeline plans to divorce Justin and marry Orry. Orry visits the Hazard mansion near Philadelphia to give George his part of their cotton mill money. When he arrives, Orry discovers that George and Constance now have a baby girl named Hope. Virgilia finds out that Orry is present and tries to have him killed by forming a lynch mob which threatens the Hazard estate; the mob’s leaders demand that George hand Orry over to them, leaving little doubt that their intentions are to kill him. George and Orry face off against the mob with shotguns and manage to drive them off. In the aftermath, Virgilia, feeling her family will never truly understand who she really is, leaves the Hazard mansion, despite Constance’s pleas for her to stay. Orry boards a train to return to South Carolina. The two friends part, unsure if they will ever see each other again. The Civil War begins.