Interesting article today at National Review Online by Mackubin Thomas Owens. The article contrasts the recent Civil War drama "Gods and Generals" with the more remote film "Glory." Owens talks about movies as history. He argues that although "Glory" did get several aspects of the story wrong, it did convey the essential truth of the story. "By inaccurately depicting the 54th as a regiment of former slaves, Glory reveals the deeper truth that blacks in general were not the natural slaves that southerners believed them to be and that abolitionists feared that they might be."
"Gods and Generals" is much more historically accurate, but it contains myth of Southern History; namely the myth of the Lost Cause. Here I think Owens over explains. The Myth of the Lost Cause is very simple; it is that the south succeeded for dozens of reasons (depending on who you ask) none of which have to do with Slavery. This is generally nonsense. As Owens succinctly puts it, "Slavery, not states right, was both the proximate and deep cause of the war. There was no constitutional right to dissolve the Union. Southerners could have invoked the natural right of revolution, but they didn't because of the implications for a slave-holding society, so they were hardly the heirs of the Revolutionary generation."
It's painful for the South to accept this I know, and many don't want to, but it is true.
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