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A Coward’s Atonement
Also known as [The Coward’s Atonement]
(1913) United States of America
B&W : Two reels
Directed by Francis Ford
Cast: Francis Ford, Ray Myers [Harry], William Clifford, Ethel Grandin [Irene], Grace Cunard
New York Motion Picture Company production; distributed by [?] Mutual Film Corporation or The Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Incorporation? [101-Bison]. / Produced by Thomas H. Ince. Scenario by Grace Cunard. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama: War: Civil War.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? William Carter and Harry Collier are great friends and both love the bright little Irene. She likes Will, but not enough to accept him. She becomes engaged to Harry. War breaks out between the North and South. Harry enlists joyfully, but Will only joins the Confederate army under compulsion. Colonel Dickinson does not believe in secession and joins the Union army. He is put in charge of a regiment to fight the Southerners. Irene weeps when the boys march away. Very early in the war Harry shows his metal in saving an ammunition wagon on a burning bridge in the face of a Unionist fire. He is promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Will feels the pangs of jealousy, but overcomes them and congratulates his friend. General Robert E. Lee sends a dispatch ordering a detachment to be sent under a picked man to defend the Georgia and Southern Railroad from the destroying Unionists, and Harry is assigned to the dangerous mission. In his company is Will. The Unionists, under Dickinson, blow up part of the road, but are routed by the charge of the Confederates under the intrepid Harry. During the sharp fight Will sees two men fall, one on either side of him. He is wounded in the arm and in a panic of terror he rides away. He goes to the home of Irene. She, not knowing who the marauder is, nearly shoots him for cowardice. He determines to retrieve himself as she bathes and binds his painful wound. Colonel Dickinson arrives with his troops. Irene pushes Will into her bedroom. She permits the orderlies to search the house, but appeals to Colonel Dickinson when they go to her bedroom door. The colonel allows the room to go unsearched. Colonel Dickinson, in a room adjoining the one in which Will is concealed, writes a dispatch telling General Grant where to send reinforcements, to Stony Fork Bridge. Will hears the import of the message and determines to secure the dispatch. He writes a false dispatch, stating that the “Union reinforcements for Dickinson will arrive at Stony Fork Bridge tomorrow.” This he puts into his breast pocket. Will gets out through the window and runs to the barn, where the horses are quartered, whilst Irene delays Colonel Dickinson by giving him some light refreshment. The scout entrusted with the dispatch goes to the barn to get his horse. Will strikes him down with a whiffletree. Another guard hears the noise, runs to the barn door and is shot by Will, who has just time to hide the real dispatch in the bandages on his arm, when he is overpowered and taken before Colonel Dickinson. He is searched, and the false dispatch found in his breast pocket. Dickinson believes it to be his original dispatch, sends it off by another scout. He orders Will to be confined, but permits Irene to bathe and re-bandage his wounded arm. In this way Irene is able to obtain the original dispatch. She runs to the barn, and seeing the dead scout, makes an old darkey strip the body of his clothes, and donning them herself, she mounts and gets to the Confederate lines, where she is recognized by Harry. Will, confined in the smokehouse at Irene's home, sees her go and feels more satisfied with himself, but determines to escape in order to thoroughly retrieve himself in the eyes of Irene, his cowardice, and for his own salvation. The battle of Stony Fork Bridge starts and progresses. Breastworks are stormed and the battle sways back and forth. Dickinson orders his artillery to shell the town. A shell bursts through the smokehouse and Will escapes through the opening made thereby. The advance contingent of the Confederates is thrown back, and Harry, with reserves, comes to the rescue with one of his old-time charges. Will arrives breathless, unseen, and mad with the lust of battle. As he reaches the breastworks, the Confederate flag-bearer is shot. Will seizes the flag, and as he leaps over he is shot and falls, mortally wounded, by the side of Colonel Dickinson, who is dying. The two opponents in the war shake hands and succor each other in the throes of death. Will sinks back “and for all the evil in his life he did, his death atoned.” Harry adds to his spurs, and he and Irene find their old comrade with his beloved flag wrapped around him and a smile of contentment on his lips.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 5 April 2020.
References: ClasIm-224 p. 42 : Website-IMDb.
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