The fact that something was not present during the historical period that a movie represents, but is shown anyway in historical context makes one wonder how accurate the rest of the movie is. It also changes the spelling from historical to hysterical. I had a few of my reenacting buddies that took part in the filming report that there was a great effort towards historical accuracy. As someone pointed out earlier that effort should have also gone into researching the beards and checking the continuity. In one scene, general Longstreet had one style beard and when the scene switches to later the same day, a completely different one! Quite a few other such discrepencies can be noted if watched for....