This reconstruction of O'Henry's work is an attempt to sketch the 34 year old D.W. Griffith's own ambitious project which will be fully realised in 'The Birth of a Nation'. He rearranges O'Henry's source of information to fit his own programme. It is an argumentative self-defence of the continuity of the settling community in America, told from Griffith's point of view rather than O'Henry's. He defines the national boundaries of the nation, demonising the marginalized in the process. He even has characters dressed up in minstrelsy just because he couldn't be bothered to hire an ethnic actor.