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Copperhead: A Film Review
an article by David Swanson
Video: Copperhead, the film trailer
Copperhead was a name for Northern Democrats
opposed to the Civil War. Now it's also the name
of a remarkable new film: CopperheadTheMovie.com.
This is not the first film about a family opposed
to the Civil War. Many will probably recall the
1965 film Shenandoah starring Jimmy Stewart. But
Copperhead is the one to see.
click on photo to enlarge
This is a war movie that neither sanitizes war nor
pornographies it. This is a war movie set far
away from the war, in upstate New York to be
precise -- just as all of our wars today are far
away from all 50 states. It's an unpredictable
movie, an engaging movie, a personal drama that
makes the Civil War and the politics surrounding
it more comprehensible than a gazillion tours of
battlefields or hours of PBS specials.
We come, through this film, to understand the
viewpoint of a man, and others like him, who
opposed slavery but believed the cure of war to be
worse than the disease. Here was a man of
principle and courage who saw better than others
what war would mean, and who opposed it. Here was
someone opposing President Lincoln's assault on
the Bill of Rights as he was engaged in it, not
just centuries later as Lincoln's example is used
to justify similar abuses.
Copperhead does a remarkable job of bringing us to
understand the mindset of the copperheads, these
opponents of mass-killing who found themselves
accused of "aiding the enemy." And yet I wish
this film went one step further. I wish it
addressed directly the inevitable audience
response that -- reasonable as the copperheads may
have seemed at the time -- the war proponents were
eventually proved right by the ending of slavery.
But the copperheads never claimed the war couldn't
end slavery, only that slavery should be ended
without war, as it had been in other countries and
would go on to be in still more. Today we have
more African Americans in prisons, jails, and
under the supervision of the U.S. justice system
than were enslaved in the United States in 1850.
If we were to wake up tomorrow and discover that
everybody was suddenly appropriately outraged by
this horror, would a helpful proposal be for us to
gather in some large fields and kill each other
off by the hundreds of thousands? Of course not!
What would that have to do with prison reform or
with prison abolition? And what did it have to do
with slavery abolition?
Anti-slavery activists in the U.K. had already
been somewhat disappointed when Parliament had
chosen to compensate slave owners for the
liberation of their slaves. The slaves themselves
were, of course, not compensated. They had little
but hard times ahead. But the compensation of
slave owners offered a model that might have
served the United States better than bloody civil
war.
(This article is continued in the discussionboard
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During the American revolutionary war, the British
had recruited slaves to fight on their side by
promising them freedom. After the war, slave
owners, including George Washington, demanded
their slaves back. A British commander, General
Sir Guy Carleton, refused. Thousands of freed
slaves were transported from New York to Nova
Scotia to avoid their re-enslavement. But
Carleton did promise to compensate the slaves'
owners, and Washington settled for that. So, it
was good enough for George Washington!
The original British abolitionists, including
Thomas Clarkson, greatly influenced Americans like
William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. But
few picked up on the idea of compensated
emancipation, which had not originated with the
abolitionists. Elihu Burritt was an exception. . ...more.
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