 In 1989, it was selected by the Library of Congress to be included in the first class of films for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".Western & Atlantic Railroad train engineer Johnnie Gray is in Marietta, Georgia to see one of the two loves of his life, his fiancée Annabelle Lee — the other being his locomotive, "The General"—when the American Civil War breaks out.He hurries to be first in line to enlist in the Confederate Army, but is rejected because he is too valuable in his present job, but is not told that reason.