Can someone, please,
write a mini series that doesn’t parade the Northern cause like Abraham Lincoln
was Christ incarnate and every human soul south of the Mason Dixon was Adolf
Hitler? It’s as if Yankees are the Aryan race and Southerners need to be wiped
off the face of the earth. Which truly begs the question: where does that leave
the African Americans?
I’ll confess a weakness: I love mini-series. I think because
I can sit down for 45 minutes and balance my checkbook while I watch an
episode, then get up and move on to preparing dinner. It doesn’t take a lot of
time and I can be profitable while wasting it. Plus, mini-series don’t drag on
for 12 seasons, thus making them a bit redundant. I mean, really, how many ways
can you actually kill someone? Most recently, I checked out the new PBS series Mercy Street.
I knew before I even placed the first DVD into the player
that I needed to steel myself for the glory, laud and honor of Abraham
Lincoln’s Union versus the swastika tyranny of Dixie. After all, it does take
place in Alexandria, VA – a city I know was under Yankee control most of the
War – and its core is a Yankee hospital. Enough said.
I was not disappointed. While there is some satisfaction is
the portrayal of a few Yankees as crooked, no-good-lay-abouts profiting from a
war you get the impression they were that way before the War so no big deal. It
doesn’t take the heroine of the story (Nurse Mary) very long to march onscreen,
declare that all the slaves should be free and the few Confederates brought to
the hospital left to die in the dirt with no care whatsoever. You expect that
when they portray her as the epitome of the Massachusetts abolition movement –
made up of people who had probably never been out of Massachusetts let alone
across the Mason Dixon. The irony of her character is a few episodes later she
puts her very career in jeopardy tending a skedaddling Yankee. So, it’s okay to
care for a coward who should be shot for leaving his band of brothers behind
but it’s not okay to tend Confederates? I’m a bit confused…
The hero of the story is Dr. Foster. They make him a
mix-bag. From Maryland, he grew up in a Southern family and his brother is a
Rebel soldier. Why he chose the North is never explicitly stated, but you soon
learn that he cares for very little (slavery, Union, family) if it gets in the
way of progressive medicine. The irony of his character? He’s addicted to
morphine, a vice that causes issues with his ability to be the best doctor in
the world.
Naturally, there are slaves portrayed in the series. Or, I
should say, former slaves. It is Alexandria, after all, a city within Yankee
control. And the Emancipation Proclamation has been signed (a paper which, by
the way, did not free any of those slaves, but that’s another soap box for
another time). These African Americans are referred to as “contraband”, a very
odd term when you think about it. It infers that they have been important
illegally in defiance of the law and without payment of duty. In today’s world,
they are like drugs or Mexicans. And like drugs or Mexicans, no one does
anything about them but put them to work. Within this backdrop you find a woman
who spends nearly every breath she has spewing out the greatness of being free
and yet all but sells herself to a jerk of a Yankee in order to find what she
is looking for. Portrayed as a very smart, street wise kind of woman; this is
the dumbest situation she could find herself in for it’s more than obvious from
the start that Yankee is going to take what he wants and give her nothing in
return. In another episode there is a young slave boy who decides living on the
streets in “freedom” (definition: stealing to get what he needs) is way better
than being owned by a nice woman who gives him everything he could possibly
need. Like most people today, freedom is defined by getting whatever you want no
matter what the cost versus the liberty to be morally responsible.
And, yes, there is a Southern family to provide comedy
relief. First is the typical Southern
belle mother (the type of sweet, loving matron you simply do not want to cross
swords with). She is married to Mr. Green who is a businessman trying to keep
business while also trying to not sign over his loyalty to the Yankees.
Eventually, he is thrown into prison where he laments that perhaps this is
God’s justice on the South for owning slaves. (Apparently, it was never made
clear to him why Virginia seceded from the Union.) Their son is a buffoon.
Because of an injury, he is unable to serve in the Confederate Army so he
spends his days trying to figure out how to serve the Southern cause and
getting the wrong in of the stick every single time. Their eldest daughter is
worthy of admiration, serving the Confederates at the hospital even though
she’s not supposed to. However, she has two problems: 1) her boyfriend is a
Rebel spy who gets caught up in conspiracies with Booth himself (of course we
have to somehow make clear that every
Rebel spy was out to kill Lincoln or worse) and 2) although her speech about
not being able to force anyone into a Union is wonderful, even she turns to
Lincoln to get her father out of prison. The youngest daughter suffers great
loss and rebounds by joining a secret, extreme group of Southerners to punish
the Yankees. So, yes, they are your typical villainous Rebels – wrong in every
way even when they are right.
Mercy Street is
being extended into a second season. And it certainly does show the hardship of
being injured in the War, going to a hospital where treatment was very primitive
compared to today and the confusion of any war as it draws to a close. But, as
usual, it only shows one side of the War – the winning side. And Yankees wonder
why we Southerners can’t get over our loss. Quite simply, y’all won’t let us.
