Celebrate Thanksgiving "For Liberty and Union"
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For Liberty and Union (1977)
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Now available for public viewing on the NFPF website, For Liberty and Union is an example of sponsored filmmaking in the service of history. It is a dramatization of the 1861 convention that led to West Virginia breaking away from Confederate Virginia during the Civil War and becoming a new state. The film was sponsored by the West Virginia Independence Hall Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving and restoring the Wheeling Custom House, where Unionist delegates held their fateful convention. Produced by Larry Keating Productions and local filmmaker Ellis Dungan in 1977, For Liberty and Union was also filmed within the Custom House, whose restoration was nearing completion. Opened as a museum and rechristened the West Virginia Independence Hall, the building today screens the film for visitors. This online presentation is made possible through a preservation project completed by the West Virginia State Archives and made possible through the NFPF grant program. Few movies are better suited to a uniquely American holiday than this celebration of citizens who repudiated the Confederacy to preserve the Union.