The other day on twitter I was asked if it is worth watching Ken Burns’s documentary, The Civil War, which aired on PBS in 1990. In recent years, the series has come under intense criticism, especially in light of the ongoing debate about Confederate monuments. In 2020 the series was re-aired on PBS to mark its 30th anniversary and it remains popular to this day.
Everyone in America should see The Civil War. Some seem to think it doesn't concentrate enough on slavery. That was not how things were. If you watched the first episode you would know that in the 1850s/1860s that the question of slavery was seen by all as unresolvable. The best the abolitionists in congress were able to do was to limit where slavery would go beyond the states where it already existed. The point is that both the north and south knew slavery could not be ended by legal means of any kind. It would mean the ruin of the southern agriculture system. Before the war no one was advocating the destruction of the southern economy - even most abolitionists. Instead, the focus at the start of the war was the question of the rights of individual states. Slavery was NEVER forgotten but as an impossible issue, it not the first concern. I can imagine that this was argued in many parlors - how to end slavery without destroying the south. In the end took war and the destruction of the southern economy to end slavery. I think Burns emphasis on how it the actual aims of the participants is far more important that the opinion of those who wish our ancestors had been more proactive on slavery than they were.
I’ve read Shelby Foote’s massive Civil War history, which is fine writing and mostly careful operational military history, I thought. I noticed, however, that he has little about the causes of the war. He also whitewashes the Ft. Pillow massacre, in my opinion, because of his admiration for Forrest. What do you think about this?
Also I wonder what the Civil War re-enactors do for those battles, such as the Ft. Pillow fight, or the Battle of the Crater, or the battle of Olustee in Florida, in which there is good evidence that Confederate soldiers killed wounded black soldiers on the battlefield or killed black soldiers attempting to surrender.
While Shelby Foote definitely says things that one might take issue with, isn't the same true of Barbara Fields as well? I think particularly of when she says in Episode 3 --"Forever Free"--that the people who "...pushed it [emancipation] forward...ennobled what otherwise would have been meaningless carnage into something higher." One might well ask: "Meaningless" to whom? This statement ignores the fact that the overwhelming majority of white Union combatants--and even after African Americans joined the Union army and navy in massive numbers, whites continued to make up a large majority of those organizations--enlisted primarily in order to preserve the Union. This is borne out by their letters and diaries. Clearly they would not have agreed with Fields that fighting for Union alone was "meaningless." I cringe when I hear her say that, because while she's certainly entitled to her own personal appraisal of what was important in the war, it sounds as though she's effectively saying that she knows better than the men (and a few women) who actually fought for the Union. I find this incredibly condescending, to say the least.
If we're going to criticize Foote for making incorrect or questionable pronouncements in the documentary, we should do the same with others who are featured as well if they also said things that warrant such criticism. Ultimately, I don't think Burns intended the viewer to regard what Foote, Fields, or anyone else says as "the truth." I think he intended to present a variety of viewpoints and thereby provide food for thought.
I believe Dr. Fields' point was that if the war ended with the Union saved and slavery still intact, it would have been meaningless carnage since the issue that sparked it was still there. And that was an unsustainable situation - a meaninglessness carnage
Thanks for this comment, but you left out a few crucial words in your Fields quote. The full quote is: "It could have been a very ugly filthy war with no redeeming characteristics at all. And it was the battle for emancipation, and the people who pushed it forward – the slaves, the free black people, the abolitionists, and a lot of ordinary citizens – it was they who ennobled what otherwise would have been meaningless carnage into something higher." She was referring to enslaved people, abolitionists, and citizens, which could have included Union soldiers transformed by their contact with slavery for the first time.
I still think that you make a good point re: the importance of Union to the vast majority of the loyal citizenry of the United States. They most certainly would have viewed it as paramount and worth saving on its own. As you well know, that was Lincoln's goal from the beginning.
I can't speak to Burns's intentions in the commentators that he utilized, only their apparent impact on perceptions given what they said and the amount of time they were given in the series.
It's true that I didn't include the entire quote, but I don't see how the rest of the quote changes the point I was making. In fact, it only reinforces it. Fields seems to be saying that fighting for Union alone wasn't sufficient to give the war any "redeeming characteristics," and that those who did so did not "ennoble" the war--only those pushing for emancipation did so. Fields makes this viewpoint even more explicit in an essay entitled “Who Freed The Slaves?” in the companion book to the series. Here she says that “Preserving the Union…” was “...a goal too shallow to be worth the sacrifice of a single life…” Again, she is certainly entitled to that viewpoint. I myself certainly believe that preserving the Union AND ending slavery was a far better outcome than preserving the Union alone would have been. What I objected to was her failure to acknowledge that the vast majority of those who fought the war on the Union side, as well as Lincoln himself, did NOT share her attitude. By not doing so, she seemed to me to be implicitly saying that their views were not worthy of consideration and/or that she knew better.
Again, I think you make a really good point re: Fields's commentary. I also think it is important to keep in mind just how popular the Lost Cause/reconciliationist narrative was in 1990. I suspect that for many viewers, this was the first time that they had been exposed to a Black woman reflecting on how enslaved people helped to transform the war and emancipation.
I don't mind admitting that I had never thought deeply about the importance of Union before reading Gary Gallagher's 2012 book and more recent studies by Andrew Lang and Matt Gallman.
"I don't mind admitting that I had never thought deeply about the importance of Union before reading Gary Gallagher's 2012 book."
Not just you, Kevin. I don't know that I heard any historian write or speak about The Union Cause and what Union meant to 19th Century Americans before Gallagher's excellent book.
But in retrospect, I can think of one place I did hear tenets of the Union Cause before Gallagher's "The Union War." And that place is the 1993 movie "Gettysburg." In the scene where Colonel Chamberlain gives his speech to the mutineers of the 2nd Maine Infantry, he talks of the promises of the experiment called the United States, and what can be possible if the Union survives.
What is so ironic to me is that I seriously doubt Ron Maxwell knew what the Union Cause was when he made his film. But ignorance isn't always a barrier from speaking the truth. And what I've learned about the concept of Union in recent years has given me a new appreciation for the movie Gettysburg; and certainly a better understanding of what motivated White Northerners to fight for and support final United States victory over the rebellion.
I think you're right. The more I learn about Gettysburg and the Civil War, the more the movie becomes fiction (same with "Glory," for that matter). But that doesn't mean there aren't any valuable pieces to the film.
Foote was the best part of the documentary. Great writer and raconteur who was also a friend of William Faulkner's. But he was great. Slavery was a central part of the documentary. No honest person who wasn't forced by contemporary racial politics to say otherwise could come away thinking any different. And this comes from a guy whose descendants from Maine and Massachussetts fought for the Union, including two uncles from Quincy who were imprisoned at Andersonville (but escaped!).
Foote was so charming that it took me a while to notice that, when he talked about Southerners, he meant white people. My favorite remark of his was "It wasn't awl valuh."
Funny, I enjoyed the documentary at the time, and while I noticed there was rather a lot of a rather irritating character with a moustache growing into his mouth putting a Lost Cause POV, I didn't realise he made up 3/4 of talking-head time. Just mentally edited him out, I guess. If I'd been asked I'd have said Barbara Fields was the lead explainer.
Perhaps you will yet address this, but one of my objections is to how overwhelmingly _military_ the series is. That's what sells, of course, and I find that material as interesting as anyone, but the overwhelming majority of Americans and secessionists did not experience the war as combatants, and they get horribly short shrift in the series. Thanks for writing about this!
But as Gary Gallagher has pointed out, the subject of the documentary--as evidenced by its title--was a war. Wars consist of fighting done by military forces, and the most immediate, intense, and often tragic experiences of a war are those of the combatants (and often civilian bystanders as well). Gallagher said that "...any documentary about the Civil War that failed to place military events at or near center stage would itself be open to charges of distortion." I agree with him on that.
I completely agree as well. Any documentary that doesn't focus on the full impact of the armies and the many battles/campaigns on the evolution of the war will ultimately fall short.
Thanks for the comment. What I really appreciated about the series is that the coverage of the war was connected to political developments, emancipation, and the home front throughout. Will explore this a bit more in the next installment.
Thanks for this effort to provide some perspective to this famous series. So far, as I read the comments, those who've viewed the series find that--surprise!--it finds room for both Union and Confederate views of the war and its causes. Well, duh! Of course it does! Remember, though, that while Shelby Foote is definitely a spokesperson for the Lost Cause business, there are several other knowledgeable, articulate commentators who espouse the Union (or Northern) perspective. Perhaps they're not as articulate as Foote, maybe they don't have his smooth southern accent, but they (usually implicitly) take on his explanation for the causes of the was. In other words, I'm just not sure what else Ken Burns could have done to present a "balanced" view of the war and its causes.
Hi George. I appreciate the comment, but I am not sure that Burns was setting out present a balanced view of the war. As I see it he was first and foremost trying to tell a compelling story that utilized photography, letters and other primary sources as well as commentators that could add depth to the story. Burns clearly believed that Foote advanced his goals better than the other talking heads.
I think it is important to remember that Burns is not a historian nor does he claim to be one. He is a storyteller.
Sure, Kevin, Burns is a "storyteller." Can't argue with that. On the other hand, to tell his story he's being funded by PBS, and they expect at least an attempt at a balanced presentation. Your description of Burns's approach is right-on. My point, which perhaps I didn't make clear, is that Foote, for all his "gee golly-whiz" approach to the "War," was only one of several "talking heads," *most*of whom were pro-Union. Put another way, it seems to me that Ken Burns put a lot of emphasis on the intelligence of his viewers, and he sort of "stacked the deck" with commentators who were not pro-Confederate.
Thanks for the follow up. I think Foote was given more time for a lot of reasons, but I agree with you that Burns made it a point to populate this series with talking heads that were decidedly not Lost Causers.
Ken Burn's Civil War documentary series still works as an introduction for viewers unfamiliar with the topic. I first became interested in the Civil War around the time the documentary series was re-aired on PBS in the summer of 1994. While some parts still hold up (use of photographs, maps, music, and first person accounts), other parts (most of Shelby Foote's commentary and the scholarship) do not.
As you point in your reply to Brendan the one way to watch it is to emphasize the people other than Foote. In other words, ignore Foote with his folksy style. For me, the worst comment, in retrospect, was his “compromise” comment. I remember Ta-Nehisi Coates addressing Foote’s comment several years ago and excoriating him.
Right. That said, I think it is important to think about this documentary in historical context. So much has changed in our popular understanding of the war over the past few decades.
I have watched it twice, once when it first came out, and once, with my daughter, who was then in high school.
I distinctly recall that all of the "Southern sympathizers" in what passed for the online world back when it first came out were VERY critical of the series, going so far as to say that Foote was the only halfway decent thing in it. Some of them got hypercritical, pointing out that photos of battlefield dead at Antietam were actually well-known images from Gettysburg. I understood that Foote was there to serve a certain purpose, partly of a marketing nature. I also wonder if Burns knew full well what the larger public perception might be, and put Foote out there so his POV could be criticized more broadly.
When I watched it with my daughter (circa 2008?) it was an extremely interesting experience because I was frankly observing her reactions out of parental interest, and she did not disappoint. She did not like Foote at all, because she found his POV somewhere between offensive and obsolete. She also loved Dr. Fields. (And hated McClellan!)
Do we need a new version? I don't think we "need" one, because the original holds up fairly well. Yes, Foote gets a lot of air time for his schtick, and an actual historian would have been better (if perhaps less charming). But the series did an outstanding job of introducing folks to the history of that period. Burns has a very distinctive and appealing style, and I think for someone to try to "remake" it would be appalling on many levels. It might be interesting for Burns to release an "updated" version, with completely different "talking heads."
My reference to the SCV is based on a close reading of *Confederate Veteran* magazine from the early 90s. Interesting suggestion re: intentionally highlighting Foote, but I think it is important to place this documentary in the context of the times. The Lost Cause/reconciliationist narrative was still very much mainstream.
Your daughter's response suggests just how much our understanding of the war has changed over the past few decades. Thanks for the comment, Jim. I am going to address your last points in the final installment.
I think it's important to recognize that historical understanding of events like the Civil War continually changes over time. Just because attitudes/interpretations/scholarship concerning the war today are considerably different from what they were in 1990 doesn't mean that in 1990 people were all wrong about the war and that everything believed and published about it today is correct. In another 32 years--2054--interpretations and research will undoubtedly have evolved further.
That wasn't the point I was trying to make. I suspect that Fields was trying to drive home an interpretation of the war that few people had seriously considered. The war's meaning for the enslaved, the abolitionist community, and even for some in the military was realized only as a result of emancipation. Again, I agree with you that for the majority of the loyal citizenry it is Union that mattered most, with or without slavery intact.
Excellent piece Kevin. As someone struggling to get through Foote’s Civil War narratives now you have really hit on the issues with his perspective. I tried to rewatch the series a few years ago and could not get past his evident admiration for Forrest. His esteem for confederate leadership and obfuscation of the cause of the war is gross and made the series unwatchable to me.
One way to watch it is to recognize that many of the other voices, including Barbara Fields, ended up overshadowing Foote within the broader landscape of Civil War memory. Thanks for the comment.
Everyone in America should see The Civil War. Some seem to think it doesn't concentrate enough on slavery. That was not how things were. If you watched the first episode you would know that in the 1850s/1860s that the question of slavery was seen by all as unresolvable. The best the abolitionists in congress were able to do was to limit where slavery would go beyond the states where it already existed. The point is that both the north and south knew slavery could not be ended by legal means of any kind. It would mean the ruin of the southern agriculture system. Before the war no one was advocating the destruction of the southern economy - even most abolitionists. Instead, the focus at the start of the war was the question of the rights of individual states. Slavery was NEVER forgotten but as an impossible issue, it not the first concern. I can imagine that this was argued in many parlors - how to end slavery without destroying the south. In the end took war and the destruction of the southern economy to end slavery. I think Burns emphasis on how it the actual aims of the participants is far more important that the opinion of those who wish our ancestors had been more proactive on slavery than they were.
Enlightening. Vielen Dank.
Thanks, Rob.
Catching up on this series. Out of curiosity, have you glanced at PBSLearningMedia's material for Ken Burns in the Classroom?
https://scetv.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/kenburnsclassroom/film/the-civil-war/
It's been a while. Thanks for the link.
Mr. Levin,
I’ve read Shelby Foote’s massive Civil War history, which is fine writing and mostly careful operational military history, I thought. I noticed, however, that he has little about the causes of the war. He also whitewashes the Ft. Pillow massacre, in my opinion, because of his admiration for Forrest. What do you think about this?
Also I wonder what the Civil War re-enactors do for those battles, such as the Ft. Pillow fight, or the Battle of the Crater, or the battle of Olustee in Florida, in which there is good evidence that Confederate soldiers killed wounded black soldiers on the battlefield or killed black soldiers attempting to surrender.
While Shelby Foote definitely says things that one might take issue with, isn't the same true of Barbara Fields as well? I think particularly of when she says in Episode 3 --"Forever Free"--that the people who "...pushed it [emancipation] forward...ennobled what otherwise would have been meaningless carnage into something higher." One might well ask: "Meaningless" to whom? This statement ignores the fact that the overwhelming majority of white Union combatants--and even after African Americans joined the Union army and navy in massive numbers, whites continued to make up a large majority of those organizations--enlisted primarily in order to preserve the Union. This is borne out by their letters and diaries. Clearly they would not have agreed with Fields that fighting for Union alone was "meaningless." I cringe when I hear her say that, because while she's certainly entitled to her own personal appraisal of what was important in the war, it sounds as though she's effectively saying that she knows better than the men (and a few women) who actually fought for the Union. I find this incredibly condescending, to say the least.
If we're going to criticize Foote for making incorrect or questionable pronouncements in the documentary, we should do the same with others who are featured as well if they also said things that warrant such criticism. Ultimately, I don't think Burns intended the viewer to regard what Foote, Fields, or anyone else says as "the truth." I think he intended to present a variety of viewpoints and thereby provide food for thought.
I believe Dr. Fields' point was that if the war ended with the Union saved and slavery still intact, it would have been meaningless carnage since the issue that sparked it was still there. And that was an unsustainable situation - a meaninglessness carnage
Thanks for this comment, but you left out a few crucial words in your Fields quote. The full quote is: "It could have been a very ugly filthy war with no redeeming characteristics at all. And it was the battle for emancipation, and the people who pushed it forward – the slaves, the free black people, the abolitionists, and a lot of ordinary citizens – it was they who ennobled what otherwise would have been meaningless carnage into something higher." She was referring to enslaved people, abolitionists, and citizens, which could have included Union soldiers transformed by their contact with slavery for the first time.
I still think that you make a good point re: the importance of Union to the vast majority of the loyal citizenry of the United States. They most certainly would have viewed it as paramount and worth saving on its own. As you well know, that was Lincoln's goal from the beginning.
I can't speak to Burns's intentions in the commentators that he utilized, only their apparent impact on perceptions given what they said and the amount of time they were given in the series.
Thanks again.
It's true that I didn't include the entire quote, but I don't see how the rest of the quote changes the point I was making. In fact, it only reinforces it. Fields seems to be saying that fighting for Union alone wasn't sufficient to give the war any "redeeming characteristics," and that those who did so did not "ennoble" the war--only those pushing for emancipation did so. Fields makes this viewpoint even more explicit in an essay entitled “Who Freed The Slaves?” in the companion book to the series. Here she says that “Preserving the Union…” was “...a goal too shallow to be worth the sacrifice of a single life…” Again, she is certainly entitled to that viewpoint. I myself certainly believe that preserving the Union AND ending slavery was a far better outcome than preserving the Union alone would have been. What I objected to was her failure to acknowledge that the vast majority of those who fought the war on the Union side, as well as Lincoln himself, did NOT share her attitude. By not doing so, she seemed to me to be implicitly saying that their views were not worthy of consideration and/or that she knew better.
Again, I think you make a really good point re: Fields's commentary. I also think it is important to keep in mind just how popular the Lost Cause/reconciliationist narrative was in 1990. I suspect that for many viewers, this was the first time that they had been exposed to a Black woman reflecting on how enslaved people helped to transform the war and emancipation.
I don't mind admitting that I had never thought deeply about the importance of Union before reading Gary Gallagher's 2012 book and more recent studies by Andrew Lang and Matt Gallman.
"I don't mind admitting that I had never thought deeply about the importance of Union before reading Gary Gallagher's 2012 book."
Not just you, Kevin. I don't know that I heard any historian write or speak about The Union Cause and what Union meant to 19th Century Americans before Gallagher's excellent book.
But in retrospect, I can think of one place I did hear tenets of the Union Cause before Gallagher's "The Union War." And that place is the 1993 movie "Gettysburg." In the scene where Colonel Chamberlain gives his speech to the mutineers of the 2nd Maine Infantry, he talks of the promises of the experiment called the United States, and what can be possible if the Union survives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWE4OzQdjPk
And a few scenes later, Buster Kilrain, an Irish immigrant (and a fictional character) also speaks on ideas found in the Union Cause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85HTLq8ZNsM
What is so ironic to me is that I seriously doubt Ron Maxwell knew what the Union Cause was when he made his film. But ignorance isn't always a barrier from speaking the truth. And what I've learned about the concept of Union in recent years has given me a new appreciation for the movie Gettysburg; and certainly a better understanding of what motivated White Northerners to fight for and support final United States victory over the rebellion.
Hi Bryan. Thanks for taking the time to comment and for including the references to the movie. Perhaps it's time for a reassessment of that movie.
I think you're right. The more I learn about Gettysburg and the Civil War, the more the movie becomes fiction (same with "Glory," for that matter). But that doesn't mean there aren't any valuable pieces to the film.
Foote was the best part of the documentary. Great writer and raconteur who was also a friend of William Faulkner's. But he was great. Slavery was a central part of the documentary. No honest person who wasn't forced by contemporary racial politics to say otherwise could come away thinking any different. And this comes from a guy whose descendants from Maine and Massachussetts fought for the Union, including two uncles from Quincy who were imprisoned at Andersonville (but escaped!).
Foote was so charming that it took me a while to notice that, when he talked about Southerners, he meant white people. My favorite remark of his was "It wasn't awl valuh."
Funny, I enjoyed the documentary at the time, and while I noticed there was rather a lot of a rather irritating character with a moustache growing into his mouth putting a Lost Cause POV, I didn't realise he made up 3/4 of talking-head time. Just mentally edited him out, I guess. If I'd been asked I'd have said Barbara Fields was the lead explainer.
Interesting comments.
I think Shelby Foote’s trilogy, The Civil War, A Narrative, came out as a paperback boxed set around 1985 or so (my husband was a book seller).
It had been a long anticipated event, and caused much publicity when finally released.
Perhaps Foote’s renewed popularity and celebrity induced Burns to include him in his series. Just a thought.
Hi Laura. Thanks so much for sharing this. I just learned something new.
Perhaps you will yet address this, but one of my objections is to how overwhelmingly _military_ the series is. That's what sells, of course, and I find that material as interesting as anyone, but the overwhelming majority of Americans and secessionists did not experience the war as combatants, and they get horribly short shrift in the series. Thanks for writing about this!
But as Gary Gallagher has pointed out, the subject of the documentary--as evidenced by its title--was a war. Wars consist of fighting done by military forces, and the most immediate, intense, and often tragic experiences of a war are those of the combatants (and often civilian bystanders as well). Gallagher said that "...any documentary about the Civil War that failed to place military events at or near center stage would itself be open to charges of distortion." I agree with him on that.
I completely agree as well. Any documentary that doesn't focus on the full impact of the armies and the many battles/campaigns on the evolution of the war will ultimately fall short.
Thanks for the comment. What I really appreciated about the series is that the coverage of the war was connected to political developments, emancipation, and the home front throughout. Will explore this a bit more in the next installment.
Thanks for this effort to provide some perspective to this famous series. So far, as I read the comments, those who've viewed the series find that--surprise!--it finds room for both Union and Confederate views of the war and its causes. Well, duh! Of course it does! Remember, though, that while Shelby Foote is definitely a spokesperson for the Lost Cause business, there are several other knowledgeable, articulate commentators who espouse the Union (or Northern) perspective. Perhaps they're not as articulate as Foote, maybe they don't have his smooth southern accent, but they (usually implicitly) take on his explanation for the causes of the was. In other words, I'm just not sure what else Ken Burns could have done to present a "balanced" view of the war and its causes.
Hi George. I appreciate the comment, but I am not sure that Burns was setting out present a balanced view of the war. As I see it he was first and foremost trying to tell a compelling story that utilized photography, letters and other primary sources as well as commentators that could add depth to the story. Burns clearly believed that Foote advanced his goals better than the other talking heads.
I think it is important to remember that Burns is not a historian nor does he claim to be one. He is a storyteller.
Sure, Kevin, Burns is a "storyteller." Can't argue with that. On the other hand, to tell his story he's being funded by PBS, and they expect at least an attempt at a balanced presentation. Your description of Burns's approach is right-on. My point, which perhaps I didn't make clear, is that Foote, for all his "gee golly-whiz" approach to the "War," was only one of several "talking heads," *most*of whom were pro-Union. Put another way, it seems to me that Ken Burns put a lot of emphasis on the intelligence of his viewers, and he sort of "stacked the deck" with commentators who were not pro-Confederate.
Thanks for the follow up. I think Foote was given more time for a lot of reasons, but I agree with you that Burns made it a point to populate this series with talking heads that were decidedly not Lost Causers.
Ken Burn's Civil War documentary series still works as an introduction for viewers unfamiliar with the topic. I first became interested in the Civil War around the time the documentary series was re-aired on PBS in the summer of 1994. While some parts still hold up (use of photographs, maps, music, and first person accounts), other parts (most of Shelby Foote's commentary and the scholarship) do not.
I completely agree that thirty years later it still works as an introduction to the subject. Thanks for the comment, Robert.
As you point in your reply to Brendan the one way to watch it is to emphasize the people other than Foote. In other words, ignore Foote with his folksy style. For me, the worst comment, in retrospect, was his “compromise” comment. I remember Ta-Nehisi Coates addressing Foote’s comment several years ago and excoriating him.
Right. That said, I think it is important to think about this documentary in historical context. So much has changed in our popular understanding of the war over the past few decades.
I completely agree. The way I think about the causes of the Civil War has completely changed since the series aired.
Shelby Foote's voice. Man, I can still hear it in my head. I could listen to him talk all day. Obviously, Burns agreed.
I have watched it twice, once when it first came out, and once, with my daughter, who was then in high school.
I distinctly recall that all of the "Southern sympathizers" in what passed for the online world back when it first came out were VERY critical of the series, going so far as to say that Foote was the only halfway decent thing in it. Some of them got hypercritical, pointing out that photos of battlefield dead at Antietam were actually well-known images from Gettysburg. I understood that Foote was there to serve a certain purpose, partly of a marketing nature. I also wonder if Burns knew full well what the larger public perception might be, and put Foote out there so his POV could be criticized more broadly.
When I watched it with my daughter (circa 2008?) it was an extremely interesting experience because I was frankly observing her reactions out of parental interest, and she did not disappoint. She did not like Foote at all, because she found his POV somewhere between offensive and obsolete. She also loved Dr. Fields. (And hated McClellan!)
Do we need a new version? I don't think we "need" one, because the original holds up fairly well. Yes, Foote gets a lot of air time for his schtick, and an actual historian would have been better (if perhaps less charming). But the series did an outstanding job of introducing folks to the history of that period. Burns has a very distinctive and appealing style, and I think for someone to try to "remake" it would be appalling on many levels. It might be interesting for Burns to release an "updated" version, with completely different "talking heads."
My reference to the SCV is based on a close reading of *Confederate Veteran* magazine from the early 90s. Interesting suggestion re: intentionally highlighting Foote, but I think it is important to place this documentary in the context of the times. The Lost Cause/reconciliationist narrative was still very much mainstream.
Your daughter's response suggests just how much our understanding of the war has changed over the past few decades. Thanks for the comment, Jim. I am going to address your last points in the final installment.
I think it's important to recognize that historical understanding of events like the Civil War continually changes over time. Just because attitudes/interpretations/scholarship concerning the war today are considerably different from what they were in 1990 doesn't mean that in 1990 people were all wrong about the war and that everything believed and published about it today is correct. In another 32 years--2054--interpretations and research will undoubtedly have evolved further.
That wasn't the point I was trying to make. I suspect that Fields was trying to drive home an interpretation of the war that few people had seriously considered. The war's meaning for the enslaved, the abolitionist community, and even for some in the military was realized only as a result of emancipation. Again, I agree with you that for the majority of the loyal citizenry it is Union that mattered most, with or without slavery intact.
Excellent piece Kevin. As someone struggling to get through Foote’s Civil War narratives now you have really hit on the issues with his perspective. I tried to rewatch the series a few years ago and could not get past his evident admiration for Forrest. His esteem for confederate leadership and obfuscation of the cause of the war is gross and made the series unwatchable to me.
One way to watch it is to recognize that many of the other voices, including Barbara Fields, ended up overshadowing Foote within the broader landscape of Civil War memory. Thanks for the comment.