A funny—or not so funny—thing happened on the way to making what was conceived as a historically complex version of the Alamo's story: 9/11. Though the Walt Disney Company had agreed to make The Alamo at least two years before the World Trade Center fell, the film was reconceived in the year after that event. By the summer of 2002, The Alamo had lost its director (Ron Howard) and its star (Russell Crowe), and the screenplay by John Sayles was undergoing a major rewrite. Howard was replaced by John Lee Hancock, Crowe was replaced by Dennis Quaid, and Sayles's screenplay was rewritten by a team of script doctors. The 2004 release of The Alamo culminated what had been a long and public struggle to make this film.

Howard's expressed interest was based on his desire to correct the historical inaccuracies found in the John Wayne-directed The Alamo (1960), a creature of the Cold War and Wayne's rightist politics. In addition, Howard was intrigued by the complexities of ethnic conflict and the issues of U.S. expansion that the Alamo story presented. Said Howard upon leaving the project, “I realized that there was a disconnect between the studio and I as to how the film should be approached.” The completed version of the film retains vestiges of Howard's vision, but they are largely submerged within a film that was built by committee in a post-9/11 United States.

The battle of the Alamo as a historical event, like Custer's Last Stand, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and now 9/11, stands as one of the galvanizing events in the narrative of U.S. history, providing a tale of tragic commitment to the cause of U.S. nationalism. Ideally, the story would lead to the redemptive annihilation of those who had killed these tragic heroes. Richard Slotkin's broad concept of “regeneration through violence” and his more focused discussion of the cultural significance of Custer's Last Stand in his study The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 (1985) help us see the cultural work that this film attempts to do and the way it fuses residual myth and contemporary events. For such myths to perform their cultural work, we must see those who died in the events as martyrs for the greater national cause. Apparently Howard was at least going to mitigate that mythology. The film as released embraces it, though in a somewhat diffuse way.

The Alamo begins with ground-level shots of the courtyard of the Alamo mission and the plains outside the walls that show the carnage of the siege of the mission, providing an image that triggers memories of the events of September 2001. The film then jump-cuts to a title informing us that we are now in Washington, DC, one year earlier, in 1835. We see Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) at a ball attempting to interest investors in Texas lands and Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) somewhat sheepishly attending a play that embellishes his life and legend. In these scenes we can see the intention of Howard and his crew to demystify the legends of Houston and Crockett. Houston is primarily an entrepreneur, and one with a drinking problem, and Crockett a creature intrigued by the contours of his own legend. But in the film as made, we subsequently see how circumstances have remade these worldly men into heroes (though Thornton's Crockett is somewhat abashed by the dimensions of his own fame, a perspective that makes this Crockett a far more humble and complex figure than he was in the Disney television series of the 1950s or in the Wayne film).

As history, The Alamo looks accurate, and, indeed, we find that San Antonio de Béxar was carefully re-created with little sparing of expense (the film cost $95 million to make) and with the able assistance of the Alamo historian and curator, Richard Bruce Winders, and Stephen L. Hardin, a historian at Victoria College in Victoria, TX. But what is missing is similar to what is absent from the Wayne movie: a sense of the way the events at the Alamo are connected to the national story of slavery, expansion, and the removal of Native Americans from the eastern United States in the 1830s and 1840s. If we include this larger tale, we can perhaps get a feel for the broader perspective that initially generated interest in the project.

Andrew Jackson's policy of removing indigenous peoples from east of the Mississippi River to the West relied on the United States' domain over those western lands. Although Texas was not a part of the land that Jackson had dedicated to the tribes displaced from the East, it did abut them. Further, Texas had become a more and more tempting piece of western land after Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821. Mexico lacked economic resources, a strong central government, and a clear sense of national identity. The relative weakness of the nation to the south made annexation of its lands quite attractive. That the Mexican government had encouraged Anglo settlement further tempted entrepreneurs and manifest destinarians alike.

Texas also rose to the center of the national consciousness as a result of its relation to the line of demarcation that defined slave and free states in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. As a state south of the southern border of Missouri, its entry into the Union would make it a slave state, and, indeed, its various settlers had mostly come from the South, some bringing slaves. The issue of slavery would remain a matter of debate both in defining the region as part of the United States and in exacerbating the conflict with Mexico over domain. And while the film does introduce the question of where the loyalties of its two characters who are enslaved should lie—with the antislavery Mexicans or the proslavery Anglos—the broader issue of slavery in Texas is largely elided.

Similarly, there is a Hispanic character, Juan Seguin (Jordi Mollà), who has a secondary role in the film and whose status as a Mexican who supports the Anglos is clearly significant. But there is little fleshing out of the character or his reasons, elements that might have added historical complexity to the narrative. Historically, Seguin was a civic leader in the Béxar region who supported the independence movement in 1835 and 1836 and led a militia of around a hundred men. This placed him among a minority of Mexicans who supported the independence movement because of their opposition to federalism and support of local rule. However, by 1837 almost no non-Anglos remained loyal to the Republic of Texas, as the racist practices of its leaders and partisans had reduced all Mexicans to a subordinate political and social status.

The film ends with the redemptive Battle of San Jacinto, as the Anglo forces are led to victory by Sam Houston, thus closing our narrative. The final scene cuts from the mass killing fields of San Jacinto, featuring dead Mexican soldiers as far as the eye can see, to the iconic figure of Davy Crockett fiddling on the wall of the Alamo. The carnage at San Jacinto redresses the slaughter at the Alamo and is all the more significant for its delivering Texas from the clutches of the tyrannical Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna. The vanquishing of the barbaric and morally suspect—evil—Mexican leader brings into being the Texas republic. In contemporary terms, such a conclusion is oddly resonant as national leaders attempt to show how delivering Iraq from the clutches of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein—and the imposition of “democracy” in that nation—will avenge the attacks of 9/11. On March 2, 2005, Republican congressman Ted Poe from the district that includes the Alamo spelled out the connection:

On this day, 169 years ago, Texas declared its independence from Mexico and its dictator, Santa Anna, the 19th-century Saddam Hussein. . . Freedom has a cost. It always does. It always will. And as we pause to remember those who lost their lives so that Texas could be a free Nation, we cannot forget those Americans that are currently fighting in lands across the seas for the United States’ continued freedom and liberty today.

Have you seen Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln? With a Rotten Tomatoes critic approval rating of over 90% and audience approval of more than 80%, viewers praised the film for its earnestness and significance, and for Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as the president.

But what do historians have to say? How do they approach the film, and how do they assess it? Even if your students haven't seen the film, reading historians' reviews can help them understand the ways of thinking and types of knowledge that historians use to assess historical accuracy, bias, intended audience, and more.

What do historians' reviews focus on? Do they talk about the same things as "normal" critics' reviews? Do all historians share similar opinions about the movie? How do historians structure their reviews? Does each review make an argument?

Take a look at these reviews to get started:

• James Grossman, Executive Director of the American Historical Association, says Lincoln does "what a film like this should do: stimulate discussion about history."
• Kate Masur, associate professor of history at Northwestern University, criticizes the movie as "more to entertain and inspire than to educate."
• David Thomson, film historian and critic, considers the film "necessary" and its release right after the 2012 presidential election significant.
• Allen Guelzo, director of the Civil War studies department at Gettysburg College, questions whether highlighting Lincoln's conflict between ending the war quickly and holding out until passage of the Thirteenth Amendment made the movie too complicated.

Students not ready for reading these reviews? Ask them where they think the sound in films comes from. The Washington Post reveals that many of the sounds in Lincoln come from historic buildings and artifacts—including one of Abraham Lincoln's pocketwatches.

One of the great pleasures of my job as a writer for American Girl is getting letters from my young readers. Over the years, I’ve had tens of thousands of letters, every one as unique, sweet, earnest, and quirky as its writer. Very often, my correspondent asks me, “Why do you write about people who lived long ago?” And I write back, “Because I love thinking about what your life or my life would have been like if we had lived in another time, don’t you?” But that answer tells only one reason why I write historical fiction, and why I think it is a good idea to use historical fiction to teach history. There are other reasons, too.

First, I think historical fiction can make history matter—make it irresistible—to young readers. And it is important to make history matter, because reading about the past not only gives children factual information—sort of a mental timeline, for example, so that they know that the Revolutionary War happened before the Civil War—but learning about the past also allows, encourages, and teaches a child to identify with other voices, views, cultures, and times, which is a good life skill. Reading about the past teaches empathy and compassion. It helps a child see the similarities that lie just underneath our differences.

Ah, but how do we capture the children’s interest? How do we pique their curiosity? How do we engage their imaginations? Well, that’s the magic of historical fiction. And that magic is a second reason why I write historical fiction, and why I think it is good to use it in the classroom. I believe that good historical fiction exercises a child’s imagination through a vicarious experience. It leads children to use themselves and their own lives as comparisons to the characters that lived long ago and often, far away, to reflect on their own experience, to ask their families questions. It awakens awareness, perks up perception, sparks conversations. Reading historical fiction can lead a child to ask, ”What’s my voice? What’s my view? Which side should I be on? Is there a right side?“ So really, what we’re trying to do through historical fiction is to help our students realize they are what history is. What they do matters. They had better pay attention. What we’re trying to do is to sort of tickle a moral intelligence, a mindfulness, a sense of responsibility, into being.

Helping children to be empathetic to others and more aware of themselves are two good and worthy reasons to use historical fiction, but to me, there’s a third reason that’s most important of all. I think the best word to describe it is delight. Teachers and writers want to inspire enthusiasm. We want to say to children, “Oh, look! Isn’t that cool? Can you believe how wacky and wild and fascinating the world is? The universe is abundant and it’s all out there waiting for you.” Historical fiction helps us fire up our students and readers because it uses emotion to make the facts matter. It uses emotion to teach gentle life lessons, and to form a ribbon of connection between the child in the classroom and the characters in the story.

Good historical fiction is funny, challenging, amusing, absorbing, scary, sad, and full of—here’s that word again—delight. Historical fiction is inspired by the child and inspires the child in return. It celebrates the child. It respects the child. Good historical fiction meets readers where they are right now, engaged with school, family, and friends, feeling the drives for love and friendship, and feeling the conflict between being a member of society and yet defining one’s self as a unique and independent being. It grows out of the child’s nature, which is energetic, curious, merry, passionate, exuberant, and earnest. So you might say that my readers themselves are another reason why I write historical fiction. And your students are the reason why historical fiction is a sturdy and effective vehicle for teaching history and a gift—a very good gift—to use in the classroom.