For you Wrat Wrangler

The film by a Kansas film professor by the name of Kevin Wilmott is so full of errors it makes me wonder if Kansas has a history department--a university in a town that the best thing that ever happened to it was Quantrill burned it and their mascot is named for a bunch of anti-slavery guerrillas today we'd call terrorists--not this smiling bird-looking thing they display today. The film was funded and promoted by Hollywood's favorite bigot--Spike Lee.

It has so many problems I don't know where to start, but at the start I suppose. The premise was that at some point before Gettysburg--we are never told exactly when but I suppose after Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville, the Europeans (the British Empire and France) came to recognize the CSA and came to her aid. And why would they do this? The Emancipation Proclamation made it very doubtful they would come to the aid of the Confederacy even as dim a prospect as that was in any event. While Lee had stopped Burnside's move on Richmond at Fredericksburg and Hooker at Chancellorsville in the east, things were very dark in the west. Nashville fell in early 1862 as did New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Jackson would fall in May of 1863 and Vicksburg (the last Confederate holdout and only thing preventing the Union from cutting the country in-half) fell under siege on May 18, 1863. To the north in central Tennessee, Rosecrans won at Stone's River and by late 1863 was pushing into Georgia (defeated by Bragg at Chickamauga). Owing to the dire shape the Confederacy was in the spring of 1863, there is no way the Europeans would have recognized and sent aid to the CSA--Emancipation Proclamation or not.

Even if this did occur, Meade wouldn't have been destroyed at Gettysburg, he would have regrouped, tried to find out where Lee was going next and meet him again and there were two major armies in the west that was still around--Grant and Rosecrans. Even if Lee wins at Gettysburg, the war continues.

Next in this tale, the South invades and conquers the north--pure lunacy. It is one thing to fight a defensive war until the other side cries uncle (Japan's plan in the Pacific War and North Vietnam's in that war) and quite another to invade and occupy a country that has 4 times your population and greatly outpaces you in industrial capacity, railroad miles, steel production and on and on. The South had no intention of taking the Union into the Confederacy. This was in fact a giant fear of the framers of the Confederate constitution. They felt the Union was irrevocably broken and once they formed their more perfect union, the free states would want to break free and join the CSA and then the anti-slavery issue would be back again and the Confederacy would have run in a giant circle and be back right where they started which is why they required a super majority for any new states to join the CSA giving the lower south a veto on any admissions to the CSA and they would never approve a non-slave state for entry.

After the war, Lincoln escapes to Canada dressed as a woman (a play on Jefferson Davis' capture at Irwinville, Georgia in May of 1865). But Canada was a series of colonies of the British Empire until 1867 and it was not until the 20th century that Canada gained equality with the United Kingdom. It is very unlikely it would accept a war criminal wanted by its ally the Confederate States of America.

Next the Davis Plan where the south forces to north to accept slavery. How and why? Slavery was almost dead in the upper south like Delaware (1000 slaves in 1860) as it was and dying in places like Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and the like. How would it work economically? How would they get slaves to send north. In the Confederate Constitution it banned imports of slaves and most of the slave states banned the transport of slaves outside of the state. Even if this was not the case, the British Navy made it difficult (and expensive) to bring slaves across the Atlantic to the Americas.

Next the CSA invades Latin America--while the South once had its eyes on Cuba and perhaps would have after the war just as the USA did, this was in response to the Tsunami of free states starting to enter the Union--since 1845 with Texas, no slave state had entered the Union--Iowa in 1846, Wisconsin in 1848, California in 1850, Minnesota in 1858, Oregon in 1859 and Kansas in 1861. Once the CSA was all slave, this was no longer an issue. John C. Calhoun the ideological father of secession warned about taking the populated areas of Mexico in 1848. These areas would one day be states and have members of Congress and perhaps even the presidency. The US was a white nation for white people and there was no desire to bring in the brown people of Latin America. The opinions of the leaders of the CSA would not have been much different from his.

Next the CSA sides with the Central Powers in WWI, since the biggest trading partner of the South outside the USA was the British Empire, German U-Boats would have been as troubling to them as it was to the US, if it got into the war at all, it would have sided with the British.

In WWII, it attacks Japan (on December 7, 1941), Why? Japan would have been no threat to the CSA and it is doubtful any conflict would have arisen between the two. It though sides with Hitler, Japan's ally. I can't imagine a regime that would strike more fear into the Confederate hearts that the Nazis. The Confederacy was a regime based on state rights and a weak central government (which hurt it greatly during the war) while the Nazis were a regime of total central government power. The two had nothing in common. If the CSA fought in WWII at all (My bet is it would have remained a neutral) it would have sided with the Allies. I know liberals like to compare Nazi Germany to the CSA but the two regimes share little in common.

The CSA lands a man on the moon. The south was opposed to central government spending projects like canals and post roads--if it opposed canals (the 19th century version of the Interstate), it sure as hell wasn't going to spend money on a space program.

The awful film ends saying the Confederacy was only a single victory away from European recognition. Really? Name us the battle. True only if you warp reality. Such as agents of the CSA develop a time machine and go forward in time and steal a tactical nuclear weapon and bring it back and nuke the Union Army...okay, that works, but using any realistic scenario like Lee wins at Gettysburg and Meade withdraws it doesn't.

There were conditions the CSA could have won--Sherman withdraws north into Cass County after getting chewed up along the Dallas-New Hope Line and finding Allatoona Pass too defended stalling his drive to Atlanta or his army is used up as he tried to dislodge Johnson a second time at Cheatham Hill at Kennesaw or Johnson isn't replaced by Davis and the attack at Peachtree Creek works brilliantly cutting Sherman's army to pieces--Atlanta doesn't fall and McClellan is elected president or Bragg drives Rosecrans deep into Tennessee (say taking Nashville) instead of taking his time and forced to put Chattanooga under siege which Grant and Sherman break less than two months later. The western campaign in the spring of 1864 is to recapture Chattanooga or Nashville, not a move on Atlanta--same result, McClellan is elected. But Wilmott's scenario? No chance in the world of reality.

Also slavery would have died out soon after the war. To suggest slavery would still exist in the 21st century is mindless. Again I ask, does Kansas have a history department?