The Patroit

Throughout the years, Hollywood has always found a way to change a historical event into an action/adventure/drama movie. A very renowned movie, "The Patriot", has had a lot of controversial discussions about what events or facts really took place and which ones where made up to make the story more attractive for movie watchers. It is considered a fictional story with a serious historical backdrop.

South Carolina consists of swampy lowlands in the southern portion of the state with hilly, rolling highlands in the upper portion. This is probably the most important inaccuracy in the movie. The only discrepancy was that all the slaves on Martin's plantation were free.

The roles that women portrayed in The Patriot, including the participation of women during the Revolution appear to be historically accurate.

In 1741-1742, indigo was introduced in South Carolina. This invention alone made cotton economically feasible. However, the large cotton plantations and the field slaves are a little ahead of their time. After numerous failures, South Carolina finally found export crops---rice and indigo. The scenes with the slaves working the fields are historically accurate, but the major crop grown in that region of South Carolina would have been rice or indigo.

Women during the Revolution were even more active than just speaking out. The movie reveals much about how women were viewed and the positions that they held within their communities in a Southern colony during the American Revolution. Some landowners such as George Washington, freed their slaves, but many did not. At first, due to a lack of expertise, colonial indigo was inferior in quality to that produced in France.

The clothing, accents, and the scenery made the movie very realistic. Harry Burwell (Chris Cooper) to lead the local militia in guerilla-type attacks against British targets. The Americans defeat General Cornwallis