North and South, Love and War, Heaven and Hell
These are the names of a three-book trilogy by John Jakes which form the basis for a three-part mini-series for TV shot in the early 1980ies. The storyline begins 140 years previous when fate creates a union between the families of a northern industrialist and a southern plantation owner. In comparing the two treatments one is struck by the fact that a movie shows what happened through action and dialogue while a novel explains the action through dialogue and commentary. Whereas the novels can tell us about the great conflicts that occurred the movies were dependent to a large degree on a huge cadre of Civil War re-enactors and the good graces of National Historic Sites Committees. Throughout there is a co-mingling of actual historic figures and the fictional characters of the novels.
Each family is held together by a strong and steadfast matriarch who holds her family together while supporting her husband and reluctantly taking over the running of the family business with the premature death of their husbands. Both patriarchs are successful businessmen who though set in their conservative ways mean the best for the men and women who work under them. When we see the comparison between the working and living conditions of the slaves on a southern cotton plantation and the men who work in a northern ironworks we are at pains to decide if there is any difference.
The families are united by the chance meeting of a son of each on their way to Westpoint as much to broaden their horizons and learn new ways of doing things as to become soldiers. The two become fast and life-long friends despite their cultural, philosophical and sociological differences. While at the Point these two make the fateful acquaintance of an upper classman in the person of Elkanah Bent, the bastard son of a Senator who while giving him every economic and physical advantage has left him a resentful, spite-filled malcontent who will continue to shadow both men’s futures.
Orry Main played by Patrick Swaze is the southerner who betrays his background as a slave owner the second he opens his mouth. His oldest sister Ashton is a petulant scheming Southern Belle devoid of any moral fibre who shows her true nature in our first meeting when as a young child she crushes a bird’s egg and smears it on her sister’s pinnafore rather than return it to its nest. That younger sister Brett from that first encounter displays a kindly thoughful nature that looks always first for the best in people. In later chapters we meet a younger cousin Charles, the black sheep of the family. As he is leaving for the Point Orry has a fateful meeting with Madelaine Fabray which leads to love at first sight although Fabray’s Father engineers her marriage to Justin LaMotte owner of the neighbouring plantation whose methods epitomize all that was worst in the slave-owning tradition. Rounding out this group is Salem Jones, the Main’s overseeer whose iron discipline is distinguished by the fact that he relishes cruelty and displays it by whipping the brother of the slave he is sleeping with when he shows resentment.
George Hazard is the scion of the Hazard Ironworks in LeHigh Station Pennsylvania. His older brother Stanley is first in line to take over the family business but has a weak personality and is overly influenced by a scheming wife who will do anything to get ahead. Their older sister Virgilia is a fanatical abolitionist obsessed with doing anything possible to advance the cause. Their younger brother Billy later continues the family tradition by joining Westpoint in concert with Charlie Main.
The lives of these two families play out against the background of increasing tensions between the slave-owning Southern States and the industrial North. The flash point becomes the argument over whether new states will have the option of being slave-states and is ignited by the election of President Lincoln who opposes this measure. Secession and war ensues. In the end it is the South’s dependence on an agrarian economy and Its huing to the mantra of States Rights that leads to Its ultimate defeat. The South lacks the industrial base to produce arms and cannon and the refusal of individual states to surrender control of their militias to the central Confederate Government makes it difficult for Its Generals to provision or manoeuvrer Its armies. Indeed, since all Its railways are laid in a north and south pattern and each state uses its own gauge of tracks it is soon seen as easier to move goods by horse and waggon. As the last major war in history in which troops lined up on the field of battle and fired on one another this became a war of attrition in which millions died. With its ports blockaded by the North the South was totally dependent on Its own dwindling resources. Dramatically illustrated is the fact that this Civil War was a battle between brothers and friends. Many like the Southern General Robert E Lee were drawn into this fight by their loyalties to their heritage rather than their conviction for the rightness of the cause. Lee’s ride to the schoolhouse at Appomattox is a poignant display of honour and pride.
Before he could cement a reunion of North and South in the aftermath of this blood bath which would have been in the tradition of a Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu, Lincoln was assassinated and more vindictive minds directed the reconstruction. In the South the economy ground to a halt as slaves granted their freedom left their former owners in droves but soon discovered they lacked the means to support themselves or the ability to find gainful employment. With the defeated Southern Army retreating home law and order ceased to exist in the South replaced by Northern Carpet Baggers and bands of resentful men like Salem Jones and like-minded landless malcontents who formed the Klu Klux Klan. The resentments caused by this painful reconstruction continue to plague the South to this very day.
