Short Pitch
It’s called Incident At Otterville Station.
It’s a Legal Drama.
In the vein of A Few Good Men.
It is like Rules of Engagement meets The Trial of the Chicago 7.
It follows idealist Union soldier Francis Merchant.
And strong slave husband John.
As they attempt to keep a slave owner from selling John’s family during the Civil War.
Problems arise when Union commanders charge Francis Merchant and his fellow soldiers with mutiny for freeing John’s family.
Together they will become the focus of internal political debates in both the Union government and the army command.
The idea came to me when reading the description of John Christgau’s book Otterville Station: A Civil War Story of Slavery and Rescue on Amazon.
My unique approach would be the nuanced experience of Union soldiers juxtaposition with the ambiguous goals of the Union high command and political leaders regarding slavery.
A set piece would be when the Union soldiers who freed the slaves are marched through Jefferson City like common deserters as Lincoln takes the stage in Gettysburg. As they are imprisoned in the basement of an abandoned hotel, Lincoln claims that the United States was conceived in liberty. As the soldiers are put on half rations, Lincoln declares that all men are created equal. As the soldiers convey to each other their feelings of betrayal by their officers, Lincoln declares that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Target audiences would be history buffs and men and women aged twenty-five through sixty-five.
People would turn out to see the film due to the universal themes of nuanced history, ambiguous political intrigue, and common soldiers fighting the system.