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WOW. Great find! Thank you. I'll have to try to keep an eye out for it on TCM or Retro. The reviews call it "a poor man's "Gone With The Wind" :), but I like Susan Hayward. Wiki says it's "loosely" based on Newton Knight, but the reviews don't appear to show the director played that up too much.

Some feel "Free State" is "revisionist, Hollywood PC garbage", saying Knight was a "murderous, deserting traitor". I have actually SEEN the movie, and Gary Ross (director) makes no bones about it: Knight *is* a murderous, deserting traitor... so not much revisionist there. He left (desertion was a big problem North AND South) and stayed gone because the very government he was supposedly fighting for was doing a piss-poor job of NOT leaving a scrap of food for women and children left behind to live on. Commandeering all food and prospects of getting food from homesteads led to starvation....thaaaat's kind of murder right there. If my husband found out that his family was being purposefully starved by the very group of men he had been sent out to 'fight for', he might have pulled a Knight and said, "screw this noise...". He would have a hard time just shrugging his shoulders and saying, "well...that happens". Somehow, if it had ONLY been at the hands of the Union instead of one's own side, it would have made more "sense" (sorry...lack of a better way to word that).

Who knows. It was a gruesome time and it's far easier to make judgement call on what one should/shouldn't do when not under the exact same conditions. I still found it to be an excellent movie. Thank you again for the links and for your interest.