As a filmmaker specializing in history Burns surely is aware that thousands of free black slaves owned slave labor, that the first legal slave owner in American history was a black tobacco farmer in Virginia, and that white innovation has saved countless of black lives.
In the September issue of the American Historical Association’s newsletter, a rave review predicted that the PBS production “The Civil War” might become “the Gone With the Wind of documentaries.” After watching almost all of it, I would suggest Uncle Tom’s Cabin as its fictional alter ego. But let us not (like “The Civil War”) be unfair. It is probably the best of the various kinds of “Civil War” television extravaganzas to appear so far. As anyone who watched the others will know, this is faint praise.
When Boswell asked that arch-conservative Dr. Samuel Johnson who was worse,
Rousseau or Voltaire, Johnson replied, “Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.”
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