Blood and Fury: America's Civil War

This documentary is a train-wreck, but be careful of reviews which are even more wildly inaccurate. For instance, one review from a self-described non-historian says " this documentary makes it seem as if the southern states had seceded out of fear of Abe abolishing slavery! Not only was abolishing slavery among the first things the confederacy was going to do after the war, but Abe wanted to send every African American to Panama! You've got to show every side of the secession because non of it is cut and dry. How would you like to be taxed "exporting" goods to your own country because you lived and worked in the south?"

He's wrong about every item there. Southern states DID secede over fear that Lincoln would abolish slavery. They said so, openly and officially. The Declarations of Causes of Secession, the "Declarations of Independence" for most of the original Confederate states, all mention slavery repeatedly and talk of Republican plans to destroy it.

Lincoln did not want to send every African American to Panama. He initially supported voluntary colonization, but abandoned the scheme when African-American leaders made it clear they didn't want to leave. Also note the contradiction between the reviewer's claim that ending slavery wasn't a Union war aim and his claim that Lincoln wanted to kick out all the black people.

The claim that the Confederacy planned to abolish slavery is a bald- faced lie. There isn't a single bit of evidence that the Confederate government wished to do anything of the kind. Even at the very end, when they were desperate enough to try to recruit black soldiers, the Confederate Congress wouldn't pass the law until the provision requiring the freeing of enlisted slaves was struck.

And the claim that southerners were taxed for exporting goods is another total fabrication. The United States didn't have export tariffs. It only taxed IMPORTS, and most of those imports came into northern ports, not southern. The "tax revolt" story is a fantasy concocted by defeated Confederate leaders after the war to make their cause look more attractive, but until the Confederacy collapsed they were quite open about being devoted to the preservation of slavery. I urge everyone who reads this to examine the primary sources and see for themselves where the truth lies.

There isn't much more to be said that hasn't already been said. This "documentary" and I use that term loosely, is a disgrace to the soldiers and sailors of the American Civil War. This is complete and utter fictionalization of historical events. I would liken this to "The 300". Sure, it's historically based but the visuals are in no way shape or form accurate. Any historian, adviser, etc. that was associated with this monstrosity should be ashamed of themselves, including Gary Adelman, the historian for the CWPT.

There is a wealth of information, books, photographs, drawings, originals out there to research things like uniforms, weapons and tactics. The fact that no one took the time to look at a single Confederate or Federal uniform is evident here. No one read a tactics manual, no one studied the progression of an actual battle.

The fact that the production company is so proud of their "authenticity" is proof they did little to no research. They found gray wool and blue wool jackets from Pakistan and said "this will do it". There are even production companies out there that specialize in historically accurate portrayals of Civil War soldiers with expertise, skills and knowledge of the period. They didn't even bother with a simple google search.

Unfortunately, people will look at this and think it is a visual and accurate depiction of the Civil War. They had the community and expertise available to them and they didn't use it, they had an opportunity to truly educate people about the war but they ignored it. I truly hope AHC never produces another film about any period.

It is understood that the American Civil War was a series of complex and pressing events that can cause one to devote their life to researching and studying, yet never come closer to fully understanding it. That in mind no series, how well funded or produced, could ever do the war true justice in both scope and scale or in accurately portraying the men who fought it. However most good studios and projects will do as much research as possible to ensure their information and their portrayal of the war is as accurate as possible America Heroes Channel and Cream Productions do not know what research is. 

The focus of my scorn comes from the complete and utter lack of authentic recreations of the war. While their narrative may contain some positive points and usefully intriguing information, the show would have done so much better with a slide show of period photographs much in the vein of Ken Burns the Civil War

What this company put to film resembles nothing of the American Civil War.  It is outright a travesty. I could fill this very page with more criticisms to the inaccuracies seen in just the first episode and their 360 shoot combined. There are more details wrong than ever right.  The old phrase the Devils in the Details was meant for this.

Many of you would ask "why does it matter if their uniforms or accurate, it looked cool!" While having museum grade quality uniforms is exciting and accurate it is also very expensive and understandably so when film companies look for a step below.  The uniforms here are not a step below, they are floors. The confederate uniforms for one resemble NOTHING ever worn by a Southern soldier. They are fictions. The Federal soldiers headware is again so disappointing as to resemble a block than a kepi or forage cap.  As someone who has worked in the Historical film industry and had to work with very low budget pictures, it is still obtainable for us to have uniforms that resemble at the least what the real Mccoy did.

The tactics are abysmal. They actually just lack tactics .  The entire film resembles a bunch of men playing paintball in the woods.  This production would have you believe the soldiers of the American Civil War ran around the woods in small clusters hiding behind rocks and trees, then dashing off in a wild charge at the enemy.  False. It actually is a disservice. The American Civil War was known for its nearly static battle lines drawn out in brigade fashion that slugged it out within a few hundred yards.  And when they did close within a hundred yards the result was devastating. Having background extras to work with is difficult, again I know from personal experience.  But having an actual adviser on set makes all the difference. How can you make a dozen men look like 300 in a battle line?  Good film making. Good editing. A DP who knows how to shoot around their limitations. Clearly this production had none of those.

Again to close, why does it matter? Why does it matter that we need authentic representation of uniforms, equipment and materials. Because this show pitched the idea of using recreation scenes of battle. They chose the medium.  Cream Productions and AHC could have picked talking heads and slide shows of original images with graphics of moving battle lines.  But they wanted to be edgy so they chose battle scenes.  So now they pay that price.  Look at the other reviews, the stars given.  We are all upset.  Cream Productions has been blocking users and deleting comments because of the flood of negative responses they've received. 

This is our history, do not take it for granted and think you can deliver a cheap, researchless project.

I have been a volunteer living historian at Antietam National Battlefield for over 5 years. I personally know most of the historians that were interviewed for the Antietam episode. Their segments are great. The rest of the production is a historical disgrace. Others have gone into detail about the many inaccuracies, so I won't cover those in this review. What I will say is that those inaccuracies are not the result of a low budget, but rather laziness or downright willful ignorance. It doesn't cost money to look at period photos and drill manuals on the Internet and see what your soldiers should look like and how they should handle a rifle and a cannon. The lack of research for the battle scenes in this production is a disgrace and it is a slap in the face to the historians that were interviewed and to the soldiers who fought and died at Antietam. Shame on you, AHC. You are disrespecting the American Heroes you claim to care so much about.

As someone with family members who served—and died—on both sides during the Civil War, I regret that this production has done more to make "those people back then" seem even more remote to the modern viewer. Even the layman can tell that there's something hokey about how the soldiers are portrayed, in their actions and equipment. There were thousands upon thousands of photographs taken in studios and in the field from 1861 to 1865. Play a simple game of "one of these things is not like the other" and compare them to this show. One might say " well, the average person doesn't know," and this is a faulty excuse. For one, the purpose of a documentary is to inform. Second, they may not be able to articulate just WHAT is wrong, but there is a subliminal aesthetic on which anyone can pick up. Take a simple uniform cap. During the war, the brims were made of a varnished, stiff leather that can look quite fetching when worn with purpose. You see a photo of a soldier from 155 years ago wearing one, and you can connect with him. You think "this guy had a personality. He was real." Now get a cheap, costume-grade replica that is finished with a soft, pleather brim that looks rather sad and creased like a baseball cap, plopped on the head of an actor. The actor looks weird, because he treats it as a costume, and presumes that "well, this probably looked good to those old-fashioned people." It is all disingenuous because it, itself, is wrong and is being worn with ignorance. This stuff is more important, and detectable, than many realize.

For me, part of making "them" feel less different from "us" is to just represent them as they would have looked and acted, not a contrived farce that seems to presume that history, left as it was, is too "boring" for modern audiences.

Put it this way: you can't expect to create an accurate-looking Civil War scene from scratch by renting costumes and weapons, handing them out, and saying "action." You, literally, need to build an army unit. The background in "Cold Mountain" went through a "camp of instruction" to bring them up to a basic level of proficiency. I'm not saying that reenactors are God's gift to history, but at least there's a core, basic knowledge there. You start with that, and bring in a military coordinator/adviser to smooth out the few individual quirks and "reenactorisms," and go from there.

I've seen viewers who are afraid of this production being "one-sided" (i.e. acknowledging that the North won the war) but I assure you that both sides in this are equally sullied with plastic water bottles and flag poles that look to have been taken from the church auditorium.