Family-friendly story of Quakers conflicted between their peaceful religion and the reality of the Civil War. Nominated for six Academy Awards, it has excellent performances by all, and a pleasant score written and conducted by Dimitri Tiomkin. Dorothy McGuire, as usual, gives a mostly low-key, beautiful character rendering, this time as the family's matriarch. She and Cooper work well together in their roles, although initially Cooper had reservations about playing against type as a man of peace instead of a man of action.

Screenwriter Wilson, who finished the screenplay about 10 years before the film was released, was originally uncredited due to McCarthy-era blacklisting/politics, and he was also denied credit on many other films of this period. Later on he did receive belated credit for some of his screenplays.

Because of disagreements about crediting, this remains one of the few films originally released without any screenwriter credit at all. Only Jessamyn West gets a credit for her novel, on which the film is based.