NF Why America Needs a New Civil War Documentary

Non-Fiction
I believe it is time for a new Civil War documentary, if conducted correctly, and without any bias. Perhaps this time around they can bring out the real truth about that guy Lincoln.

Respectfully,

William

One Nation
Two countries
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Now THAT would be an interesting documentary. Not one of the Civil War, but of the Lincoln and Jefferson cabinets. Their struggles, beliefs, and political mascinations. Perhaps throw in the Buchanan administration's short comings as a prelude.
 
Oh, sorry, Robert, I thought you meant in the comments.
So, are you saying that slavery should be omitted from any dialogue about the Civil War? If so why? I am just trying to understand your point of view, and am not meaning to be offensive or argumentative.

Note the emphasis on "Reparations" there, and this became a modern political football.

And a particularly incendiary one.
 
I thought the Ken Burns documentary did a pretty good job of telling both the North and South sides of the story. I don't agree that it was biased by the Shelby Foote narrative. No documentary is going to be perfect. I thought the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War was very good. However, there are some veterans of the war that felt that U.S. soldiers were unfairly cast in a negative light.

The Shelby Foote three volume study of the Civil War is still one of the most comprehensive narratives of the war and I hope that everyone can appreciate the amount of time, hard work, and research that went into putting the whole thing together. It is one of my go-to sources when seeking information. I like this quote from Foote that appears in the Bibliographical Note section of the First volume of the series. "One word more perhaps will not be out of place. I am a Mississippian. Though the veterans I knew are all dead now, down to the final home guard drummer boy of my childhood, the remembrance of them is still with me. However, being nearly as far removed from them in time as most of them were removed from combat when they died, I hope I have recovered the respect they had for their opponents until Reconstruction lessened and finally killed it. Biased is the last thing I would be; I yield to no one in my admiration for heroism and ability, no matter which side of the line a man was born or fought on when the war broke out, fourscore and seventeen years ago. If pride in the resistance my forebears made against the odds has leaned me to any degree in their direction, I hope it will amount to no more, in the end, than the average American's normal sympathy for the underdog in the Fight."
 
The Ken Burns documentary series has been massively influential in how Americans view the war, but it is heavily colored by the romantic Lost Cause opinions of Shelby Foote.
Good. The series wouldn't be iconic if they had some other boring historian yaking on and on and o.....:sleep:

Let's be honest...those that complain so much about Foote being so prominently featured in the series is jealous of what he brought to it....life.
 
Regarding telling the history of slavery, I don't ever recall a documentary, or movie for that matter, that shows the slaves being captured by other Africans of the enemy tribe and sold to the slave traders on shore. It always starts with slaves getting on the slave ships where the white men are mistreating them. Not ever any culpability for other Africans except for an article like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...34f5aa-ff9a-11e7-86b9-8908743c79dd_story.html .
Somehow that part of history appears to have faded away by many, including the part where British slave ships and British slave merchants made millions bringing slaves to supply the Southern plantations.
I agree with what you're saying here Belle.... THIS part of the history is rarely discussed. If it is, it's usually glossed over quickly. The only movie I can recall that showed even a hint of Africans' culpability was, Roots.
 
I agree with what you're saying here Belle.... THIS part of the history is rarely discussed. If it is, it's usually glossed over quickly. The only movie I can recall that showed even a hint of Africans' culpability was, Roots.
You should read "The Book of Negroes" by Lawrence Hill. I believe it was also made into a mini-series. Heart-wrenching and soul-searing story that will stay with you.
 
Well, in regards to the statement, “the war came about because of the failure to compromise” - were there other writers of the Civil War back in 1990 or before who were also saying the same thing? or was this something conjured up solely by Foote?

It seems from the article that that’s the main assertion against him - that and because he’s a white Southerner with a syrupy accent who got more viewing time than anyone else.
 
Another thing about the Ken Burn documentary is that there was no coverage of any battles fought out West like in New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho etc... I noticed it when I watched it in 1999 at my university.

It was still a very good documentary but I felt it wasn't complete with no coverage of the Pacific Coast Theater.
 
Well, in regards to the statement, “the war came about because of the failure to compromise” - were there other writers of the Civil War back in 1990 or before who were also saying the same thing? or was this something conjured up solely by Foote?

It seems from the article that that’s the main assertion against him - that and because he’s a white Southerner with a syrupy accent who got more viewing time than anyone else.

I thought that "war is a failure of diplomacy" is a view that has been around for some time......and not specific to any war, but universal
 
It was still a very good documentary but I felt it wasn't complete with no coverage of the Pacific Coast Theater.

The Civil War was such an enormous and vast event that it would obviously be impossible to cover everything that needs to be covered. I mentioned earlier the lack of attention paid to George Thomas (who, as the best-known Southern Unionist, holds a unique and important position that needs to be considered) and the complete lack of mention of the Battle of Stones River. There were some things that weren't covered which should have been covered, but it would be hard to decide which of those to include were the series to be done over again.
 
And also for wealthy leaders in 1850's Southern culture.



Are you kidding me? Among working class whites of my grandparents' generation, they did a PERFECT job of doing so. I heard ZERO pro-union comments from that group, as I was growing up.

I hope the next comprehensive CW documentary will dig deeper into cultural manipulation of the Soutthern population by wealthy planters. Scholars and filmmakers seem to want to stay off the subject of the role of churches in shaping public opinion, but they need to look harder at this topic from a political viewpoint, not theological. Southern small town preachers were financially dependent on the contributions of their wealthiest members, so they had no choice but to say that God was okay with black slavery, if they wanted to keep their jobs. I don't think you can fully understand the Confederate mindset without knowing how all that worked.

The only thing you are giving to support your "Are you kidding me?" is that preachers were afraid to speak against "the lost cause" for fear of losing their jobs because people might not give their tithes. If preachers were that shallow, I wouldn't want them as my spiritual leader anyway. And is even that documented? If that was actually the case, and frankly, I believe it may very well have been, I can't say that's in the same realm as CENSORSHIP, which getting rid of Shelby Foote (and anyone else like him simply because you don't want Confederates presented as actual human beings who missed their families and suffered courageously through a hard war) would be.
 
If preachers were that shallow, I wouldn't want them as my spiritual leader anyway.

Which 1860 church do you attend, and what name brand time machine do you own?

And is even that documented?

Most Protestant denominations split over the slavery issue. Quaker and Moravian did not, and of course Catholics can't split. Some came back together after the war (hence the word United, in United Methodist Church) and some did not (example, Southern Baptists, the largest US Protestant denomination).

I've read a lot about this over the last 30 years, mostly printed books that are not in my collection. Every disgusting KKK quote you've ever read, somebody heard it in a Southern church. The gentlest and most polite version of the story, blacks were created inferior, and it's the duty of good Christian whites to take charge of them and tell them what to do, out of compassion. See that they are regularly fed and clothed, in exchange for their labor. Don't give them cash or freedom, because they will misuse it, out of ignorance.

Most pastors who wouldn't talk this line got replaced by those who would.

Some comprehensive documentary needs to dive deeply into this subject. While we're waiting, I may start a thread. I'll save some of my material for that.
 
Well, here's one historian who won't be invited to be in the new documentary-

"By the time of the Civil War, the belief in the constitutional protection of states' rights was ingrained in the South's political creed. Every southern state, in seceding from the Union, invoked the doctrine of states' rights, including that of secession. Even those southern political spokesmen and journalists who opposed secession at the time freely conceded that states possessed the constitutional right to secede in an extremity. Countless individuals, in making a choice to join the Confederacy, explained it in terms of defending constitutional rights. Congressman William Preston of Kentucky, for example, wrote his wife that he would never support secession out of a desire to preserve slavery, but that he believed it his duty to do so in defense of the constitutional rights of the states. Confederate soldiers' letters affirm overwhelmingly that they fought not to preserve slavery, but out of a sense of honor and duty in defense of their states and homes."

Charles P. Roland, History Teaches Us to Hope: Reflections on the Civil War and Southern History, 104-105.
 
If preachers were that shallow, I wouldn't want them as my spiritual leader anyway. And is even that documented?

Didn't the South claimed to be a uniquely Christian nation in the Confederate Constitution adopted in 1861? Does that documentation count?

Southern preachers frequently said slavery was a sacred trust imposed on the South by the slave traders of Great Britain and the northern states. Some even went so far as to assert that God had ordained slavery as a punishment for African paganism. I'm sure some examples of this can be found in published sermons from this time period.
 
I'm curious. What are the differences between the "Confederate-leaning" town and the "truly American" city?

The first was in the county where the national head of the KKK lived when I was growing up, and the local Baptist church's pastor lost his job because he let a mixed race couple rent the building for a wedding, even though they met all the written rules for renting the building. As a child, I was given a Confederate flag to play with and told that all Southerners owe their loyalty to the Confederacy. My current home has a vibrant international community, including medical researchers from India who hold a popular cultural festival every fall, and the best jazz bar in town used to be owned by a lesbian couple. I've never seen a Confederate flag here.

It's amazing how much difference a few miles can make in the New South. But the same could be said about parts of the Old South. There were Quaker and Moravian communities in the area where members were always taught that slavery was a serious evil.
 
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