The horror of the Civil War was the graphic and powerful subject of the 1989 Academy Award-winning film Glory, screened at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Monday night. The event kicked off the Civil War Film Series, jointly sponsored by the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum to commemorate the country’s most deadly war through movies, talks and exhibitions. The museum recently launched an exhibit titled We Are Marching Along: Martha’s Vineyard and the Civil War which continues until April 2012.

Pulitzer prize-winning historian William McFeely set the mood for the rapt crowd at the library of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on Tuesday. They had gathered to learn about the role that one Vineyard ship played at the close of the Civil War.

When the Civil War began a century and a half ago the Vineyard was decidedly pro-Union, but ever since there has remained one prominent Vineyarder whose allegiance to The Cause has been suspect. He greets many thousands of visitors yearly from his Ocean Park pedestal and his original foot will be on display next Saturday when the Martha’s Vineyard Museum unveils its exhibit We Are Marching Along: Martha’s Vineyard and the Civil War.

SEEN THE GLORY: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg. By John Hough, Jr. Simon & Schuster, June, 2009. 420 pages. $25.

Patriotism, Vineyard history and the meaning of the Fourth of July holiday remain vibrant at Memorial Park in Edgartown. The one-and-one-half acre park has never looked finer. The Civil War-era cannons and cannonballs, the whaling-era trypot and other aging features of the park were just recently repainted.

Tomorrow is the 108th birthday of the dedication of the park and the unveiling of a tall bronze obelisk, a tribute to the service of veterans, men and women, who served in the Civil War, a war that was felt deeply by the residents of the Vineyard.