Quote · Empire: World History
374. Ken Burns on the American Revolution and Empire
Where this was said
The Civil War: America's Central Trauma
At 21:38 · chapter starts 20:40
Anita notes that Burns's 1990 Civil War series drew 40 million viewers — an astonishing figure — and asks whether Americans understand the Civil War better today. Burns is measured but clear. [1] — Ken Burns "Churchill said victors write history. Ken Burns says the Civil War proved the opposite. The Confederates lost the war but won the narrative…" 21:15 The Confederates lost the war and won the narrative: they cast Reconstruction as bad, its collapse as good, and a locally grown terrorist organisation — the Ku Klux Klan — as heroes. The cause of the war was reframed as states' rights or nullification, not slavery. Burns's rebuttal is documentary: the South Carolina Articles of Secession, issued just before Christmas 1860, do not mention states' rights or nullification at all, but mention slavery over and over again. His Civil War series, he argues, did the essential work of recentring slavery. As for why America keeps refighting it — because it is the central trauma of American life, and trauma, like his mother's death when he was eleven, occurs and recurs. His father-in-law, an eminent psychologist, once asked him: 'I make Abraham Lincoln come alive. Who do you think you're really trying to wake up?'
Ken Burns's 1990 Civil War documentary was watched by approximately 40 million Americans, one of the most-watched PBS broadcasts in history.
Churchill said victors write history. Ken Burns says the Civil War proved the opposite. The Confederates lost the war but won the narrative, casting Reconstruction as bad, the KKK as heroes, and slavery as an afterthought. The South Carolina Articles of Secession mention slavery over and over — not states' rights.
Trauma occurs and recurs. Ken Burns lost his mother at 11 — and his father-in-law, an eminent psychologist, told him the films he makes are really about waking up his mother. Four million Americans were owned by other Americans in 1861. A group of people with the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land — what do you think that does?
