Changes

The Birth of a Nation is as much the story of the Cameron and Stoneman families as it is about the Civil War, Reconstruction, or the KKK. However, the second subtitle in the silent film, and the first to deal specifically with the plot, provides a clear understanding of where Dixon (and obviously also Griffith) placed the blame not only for slavery but also for the Civil War: “The bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion.”<ref>Ibid.</ref> The core of the novel and its cinematic portrayal are driven by that level of division and inequality. Dixon, and, by extension, Griffith, revel in that coarsest of racial imagery.

[[File:President_Woodrow_Wilson_by_Harris_%26_Ewing,_1914.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|President Woodrow Wilson]]

On February 18, 1915, projectionists dressed in evening attire showed The Birth of a Nation on the white wooden panels of the East Room of the White House. Dixon had been a Johns Hopkins University classmate of Wilson, and that connection allowed Dixon to screen the film for the president, his daughters, and a few cabinet members.