American Experience - Reconstruction: The Second Civil War

Starring:Reconstruction-Second Civil War
Studio: Pbs Paramount
Product Type: DVD

Description

Spanning the years from 1863 to 1877, this dramatic mini-series recounts the tumultuous post-Civil War years. America was grappling with rebuilding itself, with bringing the South back into the Union, and with how best to offer citizenship to former slaves. Stories of key political players in Washington are interwoven with those of ordinary people caught up in the turbulent social and political struggles of Reconstruction.

Customer Reviews:

Reconstruction but not Civil.......2007-01-11

This was a pretty good DVD. I don't like the title. The war and reconstruction were anything but civil. It was a war and reconstruction designed to rape the South and put the northern views into the South. It still happens today. This DVD tells some of the atrocities that took place during that time.

Revisionist claptrap.......2006-05-29

And an apology for the single most corrupt period of our entire history. The Constitution was emasculated between 1861 and 1877 and remains a shadow of itself even today. Lincoln's assasination was the beginning of the end for the South? Any "scholar" still enraptured by that myth has been skipping their medication. Lincoln was the despot who let the genie out of the bottle in the first place. There was not a single one of of the 10 Amendments that he did not break. This is just more cultural marxist, revisionist spin. Enough, please.

Right-Wing Reviews "Woefully Inadequate".......2006-01-06

The two "featured" reviews paint this first-rate documentary as inadequate for the classroom because of omitted "warts." This is so much quibbling.

As a history teacher, I find myself perfectly capable of filling in the blanks in any film I present to my students, including this one. NO documentary covers EVERY fact or point in great detail, either because of time constraints, or to maintain focus on the main point rather than digress into minutiae that is off the subject. Speaking of such omissions, I find myself perfectly capable of discussing the Tenure of Office Act (which, with the Johnson impeachment, could be the subject of a film on its own) and the self-serving motives of some Radical Republicans of that era to give my students further context with which to understand this film, which I have done.

The idea of showing a film without comment or discussion in the classroom is abhorrent, and to insinuate that this film would be presented to students in such a manner is equally so. Additionally, viewers outside the classroom are most likely interested enough in the subject of Reconstruction to have done some reading beforehand, or some follow-up reading, since as I said above, no documentary film covers every point.

This film is an excellent tool to augment any high school unit on Reconstruction after the Civil War, and one would do well to ignore the prejudices of reviewers who are more interested in taking potshots at liberals than in an honest review.

One of the best documentaries I've ever seen.......2005-10-11

PBS has given those of us who teach history a real gem with "Reconstruction: The Second Civil War." Reconstruction is by far the most misunderstood period in American history, owing largely to the proliferation of racist, Neo-Confederate scholarship in the post-Reconstruction Era. This paradigm portrayed Reconstruction as an era of rampant corruption, Northern "oppression," and most of all, "Negro misrule." This view, or at least the vestiges of it, is still present in many public school history textbooks.

Scholars began to tear down the Neo-Confederate intepretation of Reconstruction during the movement for Civil Rights, starting in the 1950s. However, the popular image of Reconstruction (to the extent that there is such a thing) still persists due to popular racist movies like "Gone With the Wind" and "Birth of a Nation." With this documentary, PBS is finally catching up with the new scholarship, and is at last giving the American public the truth for popular consumption. And perhaps the greatest thing about this documentary is the way in which it tackles the outdated view of Reconstruction head-on, giving students a great example of the way historical interpretation changes over time.

The film is done in the Ken Burns style, treating the stories of several individuals as a microcosm of the larger social changes occuring during this period. The characters include a white former Union soldier who goes South to run a local Freedmen's Bureau, two southern white female plantation owners, and two black politicians.

The documentary includes interviews from a diverse array of top-notch scholars including Eric Foner, Edward Ayers, Drew Faust, Nell Painter, and Clarence Walker. The variety of photos and the quality of narration are great. The music selections are also perfect in setting the mood and portraying the emotional tone of the subject-matter. To me, the most impressive aspect of the movie is the historical reenactments. Typically historical reenactments in documentaries look clumsy, fake, and silly. But in this film they are absolutely believable, and beautifally done. The quality of the picture and cinematography overall are just fantastic.

The DVD also includes several mini-documentaries focusing on different aspects of Reconstruction, such as the development of the sharecropping system, the culture of white Southerners, the career of John Roy Lynch, the establishment of public schools in the South, as well as several other topics.

This documentary is highly reccommended to anyone interested in Civil War and Reconstruction history, and ESPECIALLY to teachers who cover this pivotal period in American history. The two reviewers who have attacked this documentary do so obviously because of their political views. Mr. Victor Alpher and Mr. Eric Paddon have glowing reviews of Ronald Reagan and Ann Coulter, among others in their history of reviews. Both give high praise to works that criticize Bill Clinton, Mr. Paddon going so far as to call him the "worst president EVER."

I am no fan of Bill Clinton, but any legitimate historian would acknowledge that Clinton's impeachment as an absolute farce based on personal vendettas more than anything, whereas the Johnson impeachment, whatever your view of it, was over issues of enormous importance. Personally, I think the question of whether or not the Republicans had a technically legal reason to impeach Johnson is unimportant. What is important is the terrible damage Johnson and his racist Republican allies were inflicting on black southerners. Together, they were responsible for undoing everything that the Union soldiers fought for in the Civil War.

Perhaps the documentary could have dealt with the subject in greater detail, but I think the reason they didn't is because this documentary is much more focused on the common citizens of the country than with national political leaders. Most of the story this documentary follows takes place on the ground in the South -- on the plantations, in the halls of local and state government. The reason for this is to give a personal face to the story of Reconstruction by focusing on the lives and times of the individuals who participated in it.

And it is done wonderfully.

Another Politically Correct But Historically Incorrect Rendition.......2005-10-09

I will attempt to take a scholar's dispassionate view to critique this documentary. However, with the time invested, and the fact that it is available to watch for FREE over the Internet, it demands a close scrutiny.

First, one would hope that by 2004 such clear propaganda would be blatantaly suspect. The method used by Burns, at first captivating in the 1989 "The Civil War" weeklong docudrama, has become shopworn. This method takes as "representative" the experiences and views of VERY few individuals--such as Vermonter Union Captian Twitchell, who attains a Freedman's Bureau commission to govern Bienville Pariesh in Northwest Louisiana, and that of Kay Stone, who returns from refuge in Texas to find her family plantation in ruins. The "stories" of newly freed slaves who become politicians, and the tumultuous period of time running from Sherman's infamous Field Order 15 to the narrow vote on impeachment of Andrew Johnson, setting the stage for the election of U.S. Grant, Federal quelling of the riots accompanying the Constitutional Convention of Louisiana in New Orleans....are just that--stories--and dare anyone say "representative" of anything?

Today the Congress faces possible spending of up to $500,000 per capita to "rebuild" New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. The economic depression of the 1870s is blamed for the "abandonment" of Radical Reconstruction--which amounted to a continued War of Northern Oppression on Southern Society--dare one say to the ignorance of social stratification resulting from immigration to the large cities of the Northeast?

This PBS documentary, funded by major corporations, is nothing short of an abomination. It uses Burns' "entertaining" documentary method to do nothing short of incite further racism of which this country is surely weary. You cannot have a meritocracy at the same time as modern politicians, deeply rooted in slaveocracy as a raison d'etre, propose "reparations" for deeds done long ago.

Innuendo is not documentary scholarship. A case in point--the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, where veterans of the Blue and Gray, just as at the 75th anniversary, at which FDR spoke, presumably were all white. What is the basis for the innuendo? I don't know. However, Stephen D. Lee's 1896 admonition to the United Confederate Veterans, which became the Sons of Confederate Veteran's, to remember the values and sacrifices of one's ancestors, is not racist and many free blacks fought in the Confederate Army by choice, as did the Cherokee Nation. It is well established that memory is selective and this documentary does no more than establish that selective memory in the form of "scholarship" or "documentary" work at least foments misperception and at worst possibly violence, if only in the distorted imagination.

I would recommend that the reader spend time with Dinesh D'Sousa's "What's So Great About America" for INSPRIATION rather than spend 3 hours mired in a distorted account of "Reconstruction" and perpetuation of racist myths. Another excellent read is "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" by Thomans E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D. It is probably NOT accidental that a portrait of a Confederate General graces the cover of the dustjacket of this book. Many Southerners are of the opinion that the War of Northern Aggression was also a second war of Independence from rule by a foreign power--which Mr. Lincoln put under Marshal Law and suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus. The "Civil War" lasted at least twenty years--not four, and truly representative government still hangs in the balance. Would anyone reasonably assert that the "American Experiment" is concluded?

Postscript: I find it altogether predictable that this "documentary" would produce some controversy. The manner in which the Civil War and Reconstruction are presented to the public is a matter of considerable significance, even in 2006. I think that all reviewers would agree on this. Scanning my other reviews to attempt to create some "political profile" by which an ad hominem attack can be launched is somewhat disingenuous, however. The bias evident in this film can be gleaned easily from the sources mentioned in my review, which are not political works per se. They are historical. The line between propaganda and history, thankfully, can be more clearly delineated now than during the reign of the master propagandist, Dr. Goebbels.

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