The General is the 1926 silent comedy starring Buster Keaton and set during the American Civil War. Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a Confederate locomotive engineer whose two great loves are his train, The General, and Annabelle Lee.
The story was inspired by the real Great Locomotive Chase of 1862 and adapted in part from William Pittenger's 1889 memoir. In the historical incident, Union soldiers commandeered a Confederate train and attempted to sabotage the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Keaton reshaped the event into a comic chase told largely from the Confederate side.
The film was shot around Cottage Grove, Oregon, whose railways and landscapes stood in for the Civil War-era South. Its elaborate train stunts and expensive production were not appreciated at first, but later critics recognized The General as a silent-film classic. In 1989, the Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry.