VP Beast Butler?

[Wild Bill]

Actually, Daniel C, Gene C, and LincolnToddFan are correct as to the historical outlook on the Civil War and Reconstruction, that it was primarily a pro-Southern interpretation in movies and books and articles at least until the North decided finally to win the war and passed the Civil Rights laws of 1964 and 1965, largely in response to student sit-ins and Martin Luther King's nonviolent matches and demonstrations and the more violent Southern response, or as Hollywood aptly called it, Mississippi Burning. Fawn Brodie's article in the NYT Book Review, August 5, 1962, "Who Won the Civil War, Anyway?" was a typical statement of the frustrated, as she wrote her biography of Northern congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

But thereafter, I think that that has mostly changed. The diminished place of the Confederate battle flag is good example of this change. I would classify most historians of the last 50 years as Neo-Abolitionists, or in the language of the Lincoln Assassination buffs, for lack of a better term, as Lincolnites. My critics condemn me for writing proto-Confederate history, my Last Confederate Heroes being a good example.

LTF is correct about the rationale of secession being more than we commonly accept. A good place to see this is in Charles B. Dew's Apostles of Disunion (2001).

I also would like to dispute Laurie's figure for CW dead. Historians commonly now go with the figure of 750,000 dead, based on newer research. I believe that James McPherson's Battle Flag of Freedom, the standard college text of the CW, now uses that figure.