As a huge fan of alternate realities (Sliding Doors and the upcoming Another Earth), seeing this take on a Confederate victory for the anniversary of the Civil War was somewhat disappointing. The initial approach taken is interesting (see below) but there are numerous jumps in the events’ logic which vary from implausible to downright ludicrous (again, see below). I know it’s only a movie. However, effective storytelling trumps everything, especially with historical fiction. It’s ruined further with Spike Lee’s finger wagging during the ending credits.
Back to the approach. Presenting what America would be like under the Confederacy in 90 minutes is a conundrum. Do you tell a story with this being in the background like others did in Fatherland (Nazi Germany forces WWII into a stalemate) or The Difference Engine (The US is divided into four nations and can’t threaten Victorian England’s American holdings)? Do you retell the events which could lead to such an outcome (I can’t think of anything beyond Star Trek episodes)? Due to the film’s limited budget (as it shows), the movie is a brief peek into this alternate universe through State TV’s affiliate in San Francisco. It’s a special evening too, the government has allowed the airing of a controversial British documentary about the Confederacy’s history after 1863, as seen by other nations, namely the UK and Canada.
So what was the crucial moment to cause history to shift? The Confederacy successfully gains Britain and France as allies through its Secretary of State Judah P Benjamin. Union forces at Gettysburg are then easily defeated since Confederate troops have European assistance. This allied army then marches north, takes Washington DC and burn New York and Boston to ruins. Lincoln tries to escape to Canada with Harriet Tubman as his guide but they’re captured in Michigan. Lincoln receives a two-year prison sentence while Tubman is hanged. The South then starts to implement changes nationwide:
- Renaming the nation from “the United” to the Confederate States of America.
- Making the Confederate Constitution the new law of the land. It wasn’t terribly different than the original.
- Legalizing slavery in every state. Substantial tax deductions for ownership are used as an incentive to get Yankees to adopt this practice. Sadly, it works.
- Any Black man who served in the Union Army is executed.
- The remaining freed Northern Blacks are re-enslaved. This horrible fate is pressed upon all the Southern freemen too, including those of mixed race.
- Most importantly and the our Neo-Confederates would love this, the Civil War’s name is officially changed to the War of Northern Aggression.
Some things don’t change:
- The Plains Indians Wars in the late 19th Century.
- Black Tuesday in 1929 ushering in the worldwide Depression.
- War with Japan in the Forties.
- Unrest in the Sixties and Seventies.
- The Internet with porn being the most prosperous thing on it.
- The South’s patriarchal society with women being second class citizens and how it’s not their business if the master has sex with the female slaves.
Some things we’re familiar with get reversed:
- Griffiths’ infamous silent movie and Klan PR piece Birth of a Nation becomes The Lost Cause with a pity perspective for the North.
- Gone with the Wind is replaced by another title on something to soften Southern attitudes toward those misguided Yankees.
- Since the KKK isn’t necessary, the John Brown Society appears instead to terrorize slave owners and help Blacks escape to Canada.
- Nixon and Kennedy belong to the opposite parties for their 1960 debate. The same goes for Reagan yet he was always a racist.
- FedEx is called ConEx.
- Canada is the CSA’s nemesis and continues to be when the documentary airs, sometime after the 2000 election.
Here are some events which ratchet things up into implausibility:
- The legal enslavement of Asians in California unless they willfully left.
- The Confederacy’s successful campaign to conquer Latin and South America from 1900-1940. (The South did want to do this to compensate for Free States in the West. Besides, if France failed to hold on to Mexico, I doubt the CSA’s chances would’ve been any better.)
- The Confederacy only fights Japan in WWII. With Nazi Germany, Hitler was convinced to enslave European Jews by the CSA’s ambassador because exterminating them was considered wasted labor, hence the UK, USSR and France are on their own with the Axis but still win. (The South’s Anglophilia and obligation for Gettysburg would make them ally with the UK despite sharing the Nazis’ White supremacist views.)
- A Berlin-like wall between the CSA and Canada called the Cotton Wall.
There was one variable I’m on the fence with since I see many Southerners seething for this to come true, especially in the eyes of Fundamentalists. Around the 1880s, Congress passes a law making Christianity the state religion. All other beliefs must leave or convert. Catholicism barely makes the cut and Jews are moved to a reservation on Long Island as a compromise for Secretary Benjamin’s contribution in saving the nation.
Peppered throughout the movie are commercial breaks plugging products with racist themes such as toothpaste, a fried-chicken restaurant, a couple sitcoms, cigarettes, a kitchen cleanser, slave-pacification drugs, electronic shackles, careers in being a slave overseer (akin to being a veterinarian), insurance and the Bureau of Race (rewards for reporting someone with Black blood trying to pose as White). Some products really existed until recently as the closing credits explain.
The historian in me just has to call bullshit on the Gettysburg part being the film’s crux. Firstly, France and Britain coming to the Confederacy’s aid was a million-to-one long shot. They were not fans of the Union or Lincoln for economic reasons yet I don’t think either European government could convince their citizens to assist a slave-owning society they found morally repugnant: the UK outlawed slavery a generation earlier and its navy often attacked these operations in Africa. Secondly, the Confederacy was outnumbered at least three-to-one so they were fighting a defensive war hoping the Union would eventually grow tired of it and sign a peace treaty allowing both nations to co-exist. Any invasion into the North would be temporary as Union forces regrouped and reinforcements from the West and freed Black populations arrived. Lastly, I don’t think Europe wanted a clear winner. They would’ve been more satisfied with the the two-nation solution as it would help them re-exert their influence in the Americas, France’s invasion of Mexico in 1863 proves this.
Since Gettysburg’s aftermath makes the premise unravel and CSA‘s production values are on par with syndicated television circa the Eighties (see Charles in Charge or Small Wonder), this is barely better than most SyFy-exclusive productions. It’s a nice attempt but I can think of a dozen more productive things I could’ve done with the 90 minutes I wasted, namely reading a credible book about the Civil War.