The Gray House is a gigantic miniseries of more than eight and a half hours that is set in Richmond during the Civil War. A real-life spy network led by women is the subject in this presentation. Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman are the producers and John Sayles wrote the script.
I am going to review the series, but first let me warn you about “spoilers.” I pretty much give my opinions on everything about the subject of review, even if it spoils any hidden secrets. One reader told me that he found it better to read my “reviews” after reading the book or watching the movie I review. So, you have fair warning.
Last year I watched the new Netflix four hour series on the assassination of James Garfield as a binge, watching the four hours all the way through. If you work or have kids, I don’t see how you can watch The Gray House in a binge session. I would advise you to watch this in eight episode-length installments. Because the series involves dozens of characters you will benefit from breaks in viewing this.
The series opens with a gigantic ball at the Van Lew Mansion where Eliza Van Lew and her daughter Elizabeth (Daisy Head) hold court. They were two of the principals behind the future spy ring. The mansion was palatial, completely decorated for the ball, with a band playing and the guests dancing. It felt like I was watching an unrealistic remake of Gone With the Wind.
Yesterday I read Kevin Levin’s take on the beginning of the series at his Substack Civil War Memory. He was so disappointed with the opening scene that after twenty minutes he stopped watching it. He said that at some point he may want to try to watch more, but that day has not come yet.
First, let me say that the opening scene was wildly opulent. I have always been alienated by antebellum Southern mansions depicted in moves. They are of such great proportions that only a few slave-owners could have afforded them. If you have been the real “mansions” of all but the top 1% of white Southerners, you know that while they are large, very few are overwhelming. So I got a photo of the Van Lew Mansion from the Library of Congress, and guess what, it really was quite magnificent.
While the production team does not try to recreate the historic mansion, the version of it in the miniseries does convey the power and splendor of the family. Other scenes in The Gray House do a credible job of showing the geography and physical culture of pre-war and wartime Richmond where most of the action is set. While this was made for Amazon as a streaming release, the production has a high level of attention to detail with expansive scenes of urban life, both those at the top of society and those who are referred to as “mudsills” by Confederate characters in the series.
One thing that I really like in the miniseries is the equal time given to Black views on Southern society, white supremacy, slavery, and the advent of the Civil War. Unlike some other films, this really gives the enslaved people and freed people a chance to be heard. While the white abolitionists play a brave role in the series, the African Americans have an equal voice in the narrative.
Because the remarks of Blacks were not recorded, there are many scenes that were invented by the production team to make sure that the Black voices get heard. So, for example, before the outbreak of the war, Rev. Henry Highland Garnet (Keith David) speaks to Richmond’s Blacks with the Van Lews in attendance. Garnet was a slave who escaped to the North, got an education, and became a preacher and an Abolitionist. It is unlikely that he went to Richmond during the Secession Crisis, but his speech to the assembled Blacks is an accurate view of how many African Americans viewed slavery and liberation.
Ben Vereen is a fictional former slave in the Van Lew’s household. In his 70s, he knows more about the Van Lew family than anyone. He is either kin or adoptive kin to the many Blacks involved in the spy ring. He is a keen intellect that accomplishes his goals and also takes care of his co-conspirators.
During the eight hours after the Grand Ball, you see the Van Lews, mother and daughter, help slaves escape, disrupt Confederate offensives, pass secret information to Union intelligence, help prisoners of war make their way to Union lines, and coordinate their actions with Union forces that are just a few dozen miles away. The African Americans they work with have their own networks which work together with the Van Lews and their white and black allies. This network of allies overhears the leaders of the Confederacy discuss state secrets in front of them because under the doctrine of white supremacy the Confederates believe the Blacks are too dumb to understand their plans. They turn the info over to Elizabeth Van Lew. Because she is an upper class Southern lady, Jeff Davis (Sam Trammell) and other highly placed leaders assume that she is a Confederate supporter. Elizabeth gives the secret information to Southern whites and Blacks who transmit it to the Union lines.
While some of the characters are composites of several people who carried at the same tasks, others are based on real figures. Erastus Willey Ross (Joshua McGuire), for example, was a Richmond Unionist who became a clerk at Libby prison where he helped several prisoners escape, in at least one case by providing a Confederate uniform to the escapee. Mary Jane Richards (Amethyst Davis) , a former slave, stays in Richmond at great risk of her life to become a house servant in the home of Confederate President Jeff Davis at The Gray House. She endures torture because of her work, but she gets the intelligence from the office of Jeff Davis. There are documentary records of her service, but history is less sure about whether she gathered all the info she passes to Elizabeth.
I don’t have any problem with combining several peoples’ actions into one character, but I am less happy with simple mistakes in the writing. So, for example, the matriarch of the family, Eliza (Mary-Louise Parker), is advised by her former slaves to head north for her safety and she responds that she did not want to leave Richmond because she was born there. Eliza was born in Philadelphia, not in the South. She only moved to Richmond when she married her husband, another Northerner from Jamaica, Long Island near where I live.
There are also a large number of love scenes early on as many men came calling on Elizabeth Van Lew. When she finds herself attracted to an officer, her mother tells Elizabeth that she has fallen in love, as though she did not know anything about human sexuality. The movie director forgets that at the time of the Civil War Elizabeth was in her forties.
There are several large battle scenes including the Battle of First Bull Run, Roanoke Island, the Overland Campaign. They don’t go into any detail about the battles but they do show representative formations and fighting typical of this type of series in which both sides run at each other. This is not a battle-centric film like Gettysburg, but the battles are not left out even if they are inaccurate.
There are some unaccountable confusions about weapons and chronology. General George McClellan is about to move on Richmond in the Peninsula when the Battle of Balls Bluff breaks out. Balls Bluff was a Fall battle in 1861, while the Peninsula Campaign stated five months later. Oh and Balls Bluff was fought with Union Gatling Guns with were promptly captured by Confederates and turned on the Union soldiers!
There is also a lot of conjecture here as well. According to the series, the Roanoke Island Battle was a victory for Union because of Van Lew’s intelligence, which is likely not true.
Col. Ulric Dahlgren is an anti-hero in the middle of the series. A conceited racist, he hangs a Black man giving him assistance and when captured by the Confederates he spills the information on Van Lew in an unsuccessful effort to spare his life. Again, it is likely that this did not happen.
Finally, Elizabeth Van Lew was not rescued from hanging by a troop of Colored Infantry. In fact, while Van Lew was in danger when Richmond was captured by Grant and United States Colored Troops were the first Union men to enter the town, Elizabeth was not in a hangman’s noose when the Black troops arrived at her mansion. In fact, she was sheltering with other members of her ring including the Libby Liberator Erasmus Ross, who was unaccountably killed off by Union prisoners at Libby in the series. So yeah, this never happened as well.
The most noble character is a Confederate Colonel who sacrifices his life trying to save a child soldier. Hampton Arsenault is the fictional Confederate who has a brief love affair with Elizabeth. When he first appears he is like a modern Rhett Butler, clever and cynical, but he then joins the Confederate army to be with a friend, the son of Virginia Governor Wise who isn’t much of a friend. Hampton loses a leg fighting for the Confederacy but then covers up evidence that would expose the Unionist underground and perhaps save the Confederacy.
The most villainous figures are the men of the Confederate provost marshal collected around Bully Lumpkin (Robert Knepper). These are former slave catchers who now use their powers on white people as well as Black. They capture suspected Unionists, torture prisoners, and rape women for their own pleasure. Executions are extrajudicial with little distinction between the members of the spy ring and ordinary citizens.
In addition, the cast is vast, with Judah P. Benjamin as a womanizer, Richmond sex workers as secret Abolitionists, a Scots immigrant Thomas McNiven as the most reliable white man in the spy ring and dozens of other characters portraying both civilian and military characters including a mysterious man dresses in black. If I was trying to pass unnoticed would I dress like that?
Overall, I would recommend this series for those students of the Civil War, those interested in women’s history and Black history. While the film drags on for an hour too long, even in the slow parts you will learn something by watching the daily wartime life in a city under siege. Much of the writing is good and the characters are engaging. However there are scenes of graphic violence and underaged sex.
