Customer Reviews

Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War (History Channel)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

With societies, as with individuals, it is often much easier for us to examine the mistakes of others than it is to take an honest look at our own. In both cases, however, honest examination is essential to making genuine progress. Aftershock succeeds in providing us with details on a topic of which most Gone-With-the-Wind-watching Americans are unaware: the atrocious violence and frequent chaos that followed Lee's surrender.

Anyone who has actually studied slavery and the slave trade as they existed in America (as opposed to simply treating them as unavoidable footnotes in U.S. history) is well-aware that it is difficult to fathom the cost of those institutions in human life, considering the shortened life spans, high morbidity rates, high infant mortality rates, etc., of those affected. On the other hand, we are aware of the literally millions who perished (some through intentional killings) in the Middle Passage and the 620 thousand Americans who died in the Civil War.

With all of the above in mind, we might be tempted to minimize the significance of the bloodshed that occurred during the Reconstruction era and the entire century of strife that followed the war; Aftershock, however, does an outstanding job of illustrating the former. This film tells the stories of a variety of individuals and organizations, including the Arkansas National Guard; ex-Confederate soldiers; state officials; African American troops; displaced Southern civilians; and one of our nation's oldest homegrown terrorist groups, the Ku Klux Klan. It also devotes a few (though far from enough) moments to the often overlooked role of Native Americans in the post-war years. It even touches on the frustration that some government officials felt with Andrew Johnson's calamitous approach to the nation's troubles.

This is one of the few documentaries on the years immediately following the war that I would consider incorporating into a larger class project.

This DVD from the history channel is well done. It highlights some of the outstanding events of reconstruction after the Civil War including the founding of the KKK. It makes the point grahphically that while the North won the Civil War, the South won the period of Reconstruction. It is essential to understand this period of time in order to understand subsequent American History.

Being a History Buff of the Civil War period, naturally Reconstruction also has it's appeal to me. I never learned much about either in school. All I was taught, there was a war, these were the sides, this is who did what, the US wins the end. Then Reconstruction was always giving you the impression of great change. Actually both were horrors in themselves. Which was worse? Can you honestly answer that question?

This was the first real insight I had into Reconstruction. I would seek out other documentaries, I haven't yet tarted reading into this yet, and would get a better idea of it that way. I would recommend anyone interested in this period, or simply curious to watch this. It made you think, that the war wasn't entirely as you were likely lead to believe. This documentary was constructed in the History Channels new way of making their documentaries, which are more like Docu-Drama's which to me make it easier to "understand".

Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War depicts a very harsh, tense, and bloody reality in America after the South surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse. It covers the rise and decline of the Ku Klux Klan in some detail, as well as the massacre in New Orleans. I showed it to inner-city Middle school students as part of our unit on the Reconstruction. It is definitely not for the faint of heart, because it depicts a woman and her children being whipped and uses accurate historical profanity. It is a rough movie, but so is American history during this time period.

One of the best documentaries on the Reconstruction. Too often books, movies and even classes focus just on the Civil War and then throw the Reconstruction into a halfarsed epilogue. This DVD brilliantly flushes out what happened for all segments of society in the South: newly freed Blacks, landowning Whites, poor Whites and (thankfully!) Native Americans. Finally someone got it right. The Reconstruction was as bloody as the war itself, both Northerns and Southerns were guility and everyone was involved.

For what its worth, this DVD includes two Bonus Programs: Images of the Civil War and Guns of the Civil War - the bonus programs are 45 minutes each. The Guns of the Civil War is the only one worthwhile.

Buy American Experience - Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, not this one. This is History channel at its worst, the video is amateurish, and poorly done. A book or real historians would have to cite sources, apparently being a video gives Padrusch license to make things up. This film mixes fact, and fiction with an obvious agenda to make southerners and the South look like evil, racists who violate blacks and Indians. Zero ballance, huge generalizations - for example mentions "thousands of blacks starved to death while conveniently forgetting the fact thousands of white southerners also starved and it was the North that starved them both. There is almost no mention of, or real examination, about outrages committed by the Federals or Radical Republicans. It makes up dialog of historic figures like N.B. Forrest and fabricates his role in a "KKK war". One point they show the well known photo (but they blur it) of a civil war soldier executed by the Federals as a black hung by the KKK. They stage silly reenactments, like one where a real figure, General Daniel Phillips Upham, in completely fabricated hand to hand fight pulls the horn off a KKK man's hood and kills him by jabbing the horn in the KKK mans eye. It also recycles a lot of video from American Experience - Reconstruction: The Second Civil War - which is a much better choice on Reconstruction.

It has only been in more recent years that American schools have dared to teach the real history of this country, which to a great extent has been neither Christian or democratic. I highly recommend this documentary for an accurate portrayal of the continuation of the civil war which continued to resonate for over a century, and whose remnants continue to tarnish American society.

A fairly nice overview of the Reconstruction Period after the American Civil War. Old Hollywood films focused on the poor South after the war and how the carpetbaggers took advantage of them. This focuses on some of the bad people who tried to keep White Supremacy lingering after they lost the war. Interesting focuses on the Massacre of New Orleans, the land given to the freed slaves and, of course, the Klu Klux Klan. There are some extreme bouts of violence for a Historical piece so I'd watch it with the kids. In addition, some will argue that this piece paints the CSA in too much of a negative light. HISTORICAL ACCURACY: B to B plus; NARRATION FOCUS: B; MY GRADE: B; WHEN WATCHED: yesterday.

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward all men, except a few hell-born and hell-bound rebels in Knoxville."



Union sympathizer and future Tennessee Governor William "Parson" Brownlow. Quoted in Shelby Foote's "The Civil War," Volume One.



"Swallow the dog" - Confederates taking the oath of allegiance to the United States, which included renouncing all allegiance to the Confederacy.



As I write this, Iraq is on the verge of civil war, and there is great controversy over whether American forces are wanted or needed there. Many of us assumed wrongly that when they were liberated from tyranny, everything would be sunshine and roses. Instead, in some ways, things are even worse than before Saddam Hussein fell. While the people are more free, they are slow to learn that freedom is never free. Aftershocks are all too common in every conflict, as this aptly named special from A&E shows. It contains violence and racial epithets that were all too common at the time and reveals how similar the current violence in Iraq is to the violence throughout the former Confederacy.



Part of my fascination with history is that it repeats itself, and this assures me that there are patterns to everything and that storms will always pass. Reading or viewing programs about our own Civil War makes almost any other conflict seem like just a bad day at the office. And this outstanding special from The History Channel shows that the years following the civil war were even worse than the war years themselves in some ways. Officially, the war ended in April of 1865 with Lee's surrender, but actual fighting did continue, and when soldiers returned home, they returned to find their beloved lands destroyed, their economy obliterated, and the newly freed slaves were in some ways even worse off than before. Violence was a daily occurrence in almost every southern city of any size, and our own reign of terror broke out.



Historians interviewed for this program elaborate on how important the slave trade was to the South, being a $4 billion dollar industry, about $30 billion in today's dollars. And of course it artificially propped up the cotton economy with it, and when it all went away, the Federal Government under President Andrew Johnson did very little to help anyone. Programs to reconstruct the south were instituted, but underfunded and barely managed in any way. With Abe Lincoln gone, his hopes to rebuild the nation died with him. Johnson unfortunately was like many northerners in that he hated slavery mainly because it gave so much power to the plantation owner elites. When slavery went away, he felt little sympathy for the people themselves. And of course southern whites, who had lost so many lives, property, and most of all Southern pride, took all of their frustrations out on their new brethren. At least when slaves were valuable property, there was motivation to discipline them but not to kill them unnecessarily. With that motivation gone, and with radical Republicans being shot on sight, it was as if the war never ended and was fought for nothing. The unrest gave rise to our own home-grown terrorist organization, the KKK, who inflicted wounds into America from which she may never heal. They were the terrorists of the day, the Al Qaeda of the American South.



One of the best analogies applied to the Civil War in this special is that while 9/11/01 involved terrorism and death on Wall Street, the market itself was only dented, not destroyed. In the former Confederacy, one-fourth of all able-bodied males were dead, and the agrarian economy was obliterated. Reconstruction in some ways was never finished.



The program shows a re-enactment of a sort you won't see staged anywhere. Governor Brownlow in Tennessee takes voting rights away from former Confederates but gives it to blacks. He threatens to shoot legislators when they refuse to come in to vote. When Federal soldiers order a southern woman to display mourning for President Lincoln, she refuses on the grounds that she lost her husband and son to the war. When they insist, she goes inside to retrieve her widow's garments, but instead of putting them on, she ties them above her porch and the other end into a loop. Before anyone can stop her, she hung herself. Much like Mr. Brownlow above, this incident showed that the Civil War was about pride and the right to self-determination. And in Tennessee, Governor Brownlow and KKK Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest prepare for an in-state civil war. In Arkansas, a war did break out.



It is always a catastrophe when proud people turn against each other, whether in Paris, Charleston, or Baghdad.

Everyone especially people of color need to read this book. It will open your eyes.