Very disappointing

Like a lot of historical documentary series I have watched, this one represents a huge missed opportunity to present a thoughtful analysis of what happened and why, choosing instead to go for short soundbites of quotation and music. Worse, history itself is distorted for reasons of political correctness. The first programme claims that the only real issue in the war was slavery and that all else stemmed from this. This is simply not true and I can only assume that the American producers felt a need to expiate some kind of national slave guilt. In fact some slave states chose to stay with the Union and (at least initially) some northern states did not seek to abolish slavery, merely to limit its spread and to allow runaway slaves their freedom. Similarly, nowhere is it stated that Lincoln was at first reluctant to allow black units to serve in the Union army. Lincoln himself chose to turn slavery into an issue precisely because he was uneasy with the legality and morality of the real causus belli: the right of any state to self-determinism and therefore secession.