Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Gods and Generals is arguably the first major film to treat our Civil War in both depth and breadth and not veer into political correctness. As reviewer Lynn Hopewell aptly describes, those participating had a broad variety of convictions and motives. Previous fictional (e.g., Glory) and documentary (e.g., Ken Burns' The Civil War) treatments hew to the tired old line that slavery was either the only cause for the War or the only one of consequence (it certainly became the major Northern motive later). This war's cause was no more about slavery than WW II was about saving the Jews from the Holocaust or the recent Iraq war was about weapons of mass destruction. Current events are instructive in the way leaders often seek to recast events and decisions in their best light and distance themselves from unsupportable things they said prior to a conflict. If the film had even briefly covered the decades leading up to the Rebellion (as it was known in those times) it could have more clearly revealed how both sides were manipulated into the conflict by their extreme elements: - rich Northern businessmen sought to protect their uncompetitive manufacturing from European imports with heavy tariffs which fell disproportionately on the South. - Republican leaders focused on wiping out states rights and strengthening the Federal government in order to build an American empire and reward their wealthy constituents through massive political patronage - Northern abolitionists (a minority within the Republican Party), and - wealthy Southern plantation owners fearing future restrictions on the future of slavery. Suggsted reading: DiLorenzo - The Real Lincoln Adams - When in the Course of Human Events Freehling - The Road to Disunion: Session at Bay 1776 - 1854