"Thanks a Lot, Ken Burns"

I just read the article "Thanks a Lot, Ken Burns" by James M. Lundberg, professor of 19th century history at Sacred Heart University. He writes about Ken Burn's famous documentary on the Civil War, saying "Because of you, my Civil War lecture is always packed—with students raised on your sentimental, romantic, deeply misleading portrait of the conflict."


For your reading pleasure (if you don't go read the article yourself), I've excerpted a few of my favorite quotes. I really enjoyed his critique of the documentary and especially appreciated his assessment of writer Shelby Foote's description of the conflict, as quoted below:

...But the Civil War forged something different—the powerful modern juggernaut that we boldly and ungrammatically refer to in the singular—"the United States is." And that, according to Foote, "sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an 'is.' " The moment of the most intense division in American history thus becomes our real national genesis—a mythic struggle in which we expressed our deepest feelings, our truest sentiments, our noblest words, and became our modern selves...

...Watching the film, you might easily forget that one side was not fighting for, but against the very things that Burns claims the war so gloriously achieved. Confederates, you might need reminding after seeing it, were fighting not for the unification of the nation, but for its dissolution. Moreover, they were fighting for their independence from the United States in the name of slavery and the racial hierarchy that underlay it...

...These are important realities to grasp about the Civil War, but addressing them head on would muddy Burns' neat story of heroism, fraternity, reunion, and freedom...

James M. Lundberg, "Thanks a Lot, Ken Burns," Slate, June 7, 2011. Accessed June 11, 2011. http://www.slate.com/id/2295509/.