Did Ken Burns’ The Civil War teach John Kelly that the war was the result of “the lack of an ability to compromise”?

New York Magazine

As Jonathan Chait notes, the White House chief of staff’s controversial claims about the Civil War “are an almost verbatim recapitulation” of the thoughts of Shelby Foote, who was given the most screen time with 89 appearances in Burns’ epic 11 1/2-hour PBS documentary. “For all the technical skill Burns brings to bear on his subject, which he brings to life without any historical footage, his analytic framework is a disaster,” says Chait. “Burns relies heavily on Shelby Foote, a novelist and quasi-historian whose ability to spin colorful tales gobbled up large chunks of airtime. Foote presented (Robert E.) Lee and other Confederate fighters as largely driven by motives other than preserving human property, and bemoaned the failure of the North and South to compromise (a compromise that would inevitably have preserved slavery).” Chait adds: “It was Burns who chose to give Foote literally nine times as many appearances as Barbara Fields — a real historian whose perspective Burns scants.”

ALSO:

• Stephen Colbert slams Kelly: You’re a general and you don’t know why the Civil War happened!?”
• Late Night’s Amber Ruffin: “Lack of compromise (is) an awful strange way to pronounce slavery”