There’s a new film that begins by showing the famous raising of the American flag atop Mt Suribachi on Iwo Jima. But as the flag goes up, it’s turns out not to be the American flag at all, but a Confederate flag.
The film’s title is “C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America” and purports to show what America would look like had the Confederacy defeated the Union. I Haven’t seen it and have no interest in seeing it, but according to a review at Filmcritic.com, this country would be a dark and sinister place where slavery is the norm.
The problems with CSA are obvious from the start. First, it’s based on the paranoid premise, common among Northeast liberals, that the South is largely populated by uneducated, evil racists. And second, it’s based on false historical assumptions.
Chris Barsanti, who reviewed the film and is presumably a Northeast liberal (no offense intended – I myself am a reformed Northeast liberal), tends to agree that the film accurately portrays what America would have become if Confederate forces had been victorious.
So here’s a quick review of the facts:
- The Southern States seceded from the Union not because of slavery but because the North was restricting the South’s ability to trade with England.
- Slavery was on it’s way out anyway. There were plenty of Abolishionists in the South and there were plenty of slaves in the North when war broke out. The majority of real historians (not the armchair variety that skulk about Hollywood) believe that slavery would have soon been abolished with or without the Civil War.
- Remember, the South seceded from the Union. The North declared war to prevent secession. If the South had been victorious at Gettysburg, there is nothing to suggest that they would have done anything other than to go home and continue with the business of forming a new seperate country.
A few decades ago, the joke was that the South was still fighting the Civil War. Now Northeast liberals, fixated on eliminating ever last vestige of the Confederacy including the Confederate flag, are the ones who are still fighting the war.
Oops. Got a couple of “facts” wrong.
First, the Civil War didn’t happen solely for trade reasons. You forgot a whole host of other influences, as well, from an increasingly growing federal government to transcontinental railroad disputes (the northern states wanted one; the southern didn’t).
However, all the issues — including tarriff disputes — can be traced back directly to slavery. Slavery enabled the South’s cash crop — cotton — around which all other issues arose.
Also, the premise that slavery would have eventually been abolished is pure speculation. There were Southern advocates for abolition (though “plenty” is hardly an adjective that springs to mind), but most arose only later in the war when the South’s manpower started to dwindle and some leaders thought that slaves would fight in exchange for freedom. (It is interesting to note that the Confederate government rejected this suggestion even as the Union army was entrenched outside of Richmond, indicating that the Confederacy preferred destruction to emancipation.)
Most historians do agree slaves would have been freed, but only as part of the organic process whereby agricutlural production would be squeezed out by the manufacturing industry. How long this would have taken is an interesting question. Considering that the South continued to lag behind in industrial production well into the twentieth century even after losing the war, an argument could easily be made that manumission would have waited until the 1960s if the South had won…
Thank you for posting a thoughtful and civil comment.
While I agree with you that there was not a single cause for the Civil War – there never is a single cause for war – I disagree with your conclusion that slavery was the central issue. Yes, slavery was enabling the South’s agrarian economy to flourish beyond what it should have, but I believe it was the cavalier attitude by the North towards Southern problems that fueled passions.
The point of my post was simply to say that contrary to what this film portrays, Southerners were not a bloodthirsty lot of subhumans intent on perpetuating slavery at any cost. Yes, slavery was a central issue for some, but the South as a whole was divided on the issue of slavery even in 1862.
And agriculture would not have been “squeezed out” but rather, industrialization was creating the machinery which made agriculture many times more efficient, negating the need for massive amounts of labor.
My premise that slavery was almost dead is not based on speculation but based on the fact that the abolishionist movement was gaining a head of steam in a similar way to what happened in England. A Christian revival, manifested in the efforts of people like Wilberforce brought an end to slavery in England and the same thing was happening here.
I think that the real speculation here is the notion that slavery might have survived into the 1960’s.