How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.
Quote #1
[Austin Stoneman awkwardly readjusts his wig while meeting with Charles Sumner.]
This is a subtle way of making Stoneman seem phony. They don't show Charles Sumner adjusting his wig, after all, and he's supposed to be the good guy in this scene.
Quote #2
AUSTIN STONEMAN: Their leaders must be hanged and their states treated as conquered provinces.
LINCOLN: I shall deal with them as if they never were away.
This shows the two predominant trains of thought in the aftermath of the Civil War. One sought to make the reconstruction process as unobtrusive as possible; one sought to receive restitution for this massive calamity. Griffith is obviously manipulating these perspectives a bit, but both sides have a degree of validity.
Quote #3
INTERTITLE: The uncrowned king. The Executive Mansion of the Nation has shifted from the White House to this strange house on the Capitol Hill.
After Lincoln's death, Stoneman becomes the unofficial leader of Washington. Griffith obviously sees this as a negative thing, describing him as a "king," which has nasty connotations in America. To push this further, he depicts Stoneman as becoming drunk off power almost immediately. He's a total lightweight.
Quote #4
INTERTITLE: Stoneman [...] send Lunch South to aid the carpetbaggers in organizing and wielding the power of the negro vote.
Silas Lynch becomes Stoneman's proxy in the South during the Reconstruction. He does the unthinkable thing of helping Black people employ their voting rights—gasp. Unlike us, Griffith sees this as a form of Northern manipulation of Southern politics.
Quote #5
INTERTITLE: The Freedman's Bureau. The negroes getting free supplies. The charity of a generous North misused to delude the ignorant.
While giving people who have been enslaved for hundreds of years a few things to rebuild their lives sounds pretty fair to us, Griffith seems to think that this is yet another way that powerful people are manipulating the South. This dude is your classic conspiracy nut.
Quote #6
INTERTITLE: Election day. All blacks are given the ballot, while the leading whites are disfranchised.
First off, this is so historically inaccurate that it makes our brain hurt. The reality is the complete opposite. Putting that aside, however, Griffith is trying to say that the pendulum of power has completely swung the other direction in the South.
Quote #7
BEN: The case was tried before a negro magistrate and the verdict rendered against the whites by the negro jury.
Oh, the horror. Griffith seems to have a problem with Black people being placed into positions of power over white people no matter the circumstances, which highlights the intense racism that saturates The Birth of a Nation.
Quote #8
AUSTIN STONEMAN: We will crush the white South under the heel of the black South.
While this is another thoroughly inaccurate historical nugget courtesy of Griffith, it's another way of expressing his feeling that white people have lost power after the Civil War.
Quote #9
INTERTITLE: Townsmen enlisted in the search of the accused Gus, that he may be given a fair trial in the dim halls of the Invisible Empire.
Okay, so trying a white man in an all-Black court is immoral, but trying a Black man in an all-white court with no official power and a stated mission of subjugating Black people is A-Okay? It's clear by now that Griffith's ideology is that white people inherently belong in a position of power over everyone else.