07: Civil War

cholars can agree that slavery, more than any other issue, divided North and South, there is still much to be said about why slavery proved so divisive and why sectional compromise ultimately proved elusive.

It is the duty of every government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever class, color, or condition, and especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of nations and the usages and customs of war as carried on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment of prisoners of war as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person, on account of his color, and for no offence against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism and a crime against the civilization of the age. The government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy shall sell or enslave anyone because of his color, the offense shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy’s prisoners in our possession. It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and received the treatment due to a prisoner of war. Abraham Lincoln

With funding and filming taking place in the late 1980s, “The Civil War” did reflect the time in which it was made. James McPherson’s <em>Battle Cry of Freedom </em>won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989, and Michael Shaara’s <em>The Killer Angels</em>, a best-selling novel from 1974 about the Battle of Gettysburg, still exerted obvious influence. Both of these popular histories were focused almost solely on military history – battles, soldiers, and life on the warfront, and they seemingly guided the general focus of both the editing and production of “The Civil War.”

At nine minutes into the first episode, the film’s only historian with a doctorate, Barbara Fields—now recognized as one of the world’s foremost scholars on race and racism—unequivocally stated that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. The bloodiest time in our nation’s history, she argued, was about “humanity, human dignity, human freedom.”

“The Civil War” skews towards propagating the idea of the Lost Cause, often venerating Confederate officers and soldiers if not the Confederacy itself. The first episode alone reveals how deeply this ran: Within the opening few minutes, narrator David McCullough literally attributes the cause of the war to states’ rights. In what would become a refrain among groups ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, his proclamation resonates: “What began as a bitter dispute over union and states’ rights..."

"We never imprison a poor man who does not pay his taxes," Sen. John Ten Eyck said of his native New Jersey, "but if a man rolling in wealth and bloated with stocks, at this period of time, refuses to pay taxation for the support of the Government, and to save the nation from the consequences of this rebellion, he ought to go to prison." ⁴⁸

The Klan itself played a large role in this first effort to create the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain. Inspired by <em>The Birth of a Nation</em>, Alabama native William J. Simmons held a ceremony atop Stone Mountain in 1915 to announce the re-founding of the Ku Klux Klan.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.