Spielberg is a hack. Always has been, always will be.
Nothing wrong with being a hack, but hack with pretensions is the worst.
As far as this, what Dave said in 12: “Slavery was the issue that made the war inevitable. Both sides were right, and both sides were wrong. The Federals won. Get over it.” is a good summary.
As far as woulda coulda shoulda, the South ought to have freed the slaves and paid wages. Then seceded. There’d’ve been no moral basis for the North to fight and it’d probably made the Southern economy better.
The North spent decades in the Nineteenth Century importuning the South to free the slaves. They wanted to pay the freight to do it - but the South had plenty of shoulda, and plenty of coulda, but not an ounce of woulda. They simply wouldn’t do it.Then seceded. There’d’ve been no moral basis for the North to fight and it’d probably made the Southern economy better.
Had they freed the slaves, the North would IMHO have made accommodations on anything else. Secession wouldn’t have been necessary. No point to it.But then, the same was true of the British when Benjamin Franklin represented the colonies and proposed basically the British Commonwealth. One monarch, many Parliaments. Ultimately the British obviously came around to the conclusion that Franklin was right. About a century and a half too late. Interesting to speculate about the results of accepting Franklin’s proposal (he wasn’t the only American to propose it) might have been. No War Between the States. A lot less diversity of immigration, most likely - and probably a lot slower, more limited expansion - no Louisiana Purchase, most likely.
“Spielberg is a hack. Always has been, always will be.”
As opposed to what other filmmaker? He’s clearly a genius of the medium.