Noticed that colleague Eric Black’s Civil War Anniversary post, “What if Lincoln had allowed the South to secede?” is getting a lot of page views and comments, including from readers fiddling with “What America would look like now” scenarios.
So I thought I’d throw a recent film on the hopper for those who might not be aware of it. “C.S.A. The Confederate States of America” came out in 2004, an Independent Film Channel/Spike Lee production.
The dystopia goes further than Black’s scenario. In this one, the South doesn’t secede, it takes over the North and chases Lincoln to Canada — and that’s probably the flick’s biggest weakness. The parody (set in modern-day America) is frequently overbroad and the acting is, well, mediocre at best. But it’s not a waste of time; some of the most outrageous “C.S.A.” moments are firmly grounded in post-Civil War history.
It’s available via Netflix Instant Viewing. Despite its flaws, this fan of dystopian fiction found it an interesting 89 minutes.
In November, 1960, Look Magazine commissioned a well-known Civil War expert MacKinlay Kantor, to write a lengthy article called “If The South Had Won The Civil War.” It was accompanied by color illustrations of what-ifs, including Lincoln being taken away to an unknown fate. I was ten years old at the time and still remember the effect the article had on me. It must have had a similar effect on others, as the article was republished as a book and it is still available on Amazon today.
It didn’t happen then, but the southern conservatives and Tea Partiers seem to be trying to rewrite history and make it happen now. Frightening!
You’re right. The acting is REALLY bad in the CSA movie.
I’ve been reading dystopian alt-histories centered on World War II (“The Man in the High Castle” and “The Plot Against America”). I’ll have to move backward to the Civil War with Kantor’s piece. It sounds fascinating.
My biggest problem with the CSA movie was also the idea that if the CSA had won the Civil War it would have decided to take over the Union territory. It’s pure BS, but the thought experiment is an important one nonetheless.
This reminds me of Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” from a few years ago, which re-images WW2 with American hero (and Nazi-sympathizing) Charles Lindbergh defeating FDR for the presidency in 1940. http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-America-Novel/dp/0618509283
The whole thing is an absurd fantasy. The Confederates had no desire to rule over the Northern states. They simply wished to leave. Also, the whole idea that slavery would have survived as an economic system is of course absurd. Over the course of 75 years it died out in almost 2 dozen western countries and was already dying out in Maryland where 50% of blacks were freedmen by 1860 and Virginia where 25% were as the process of industrialization spread south…..and make no mistake, it is industrialization which killed slavery everywhere in the Western world in such a short time.