Four Score and 70 Years Ago

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The president's speech followed a two–hour address so
photographers could be forgiven for thinking they had
plenty of time to prepare. But Lincoln's speech was so
brief it was over before photographers could get ready.

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"The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

Abraham Lincoln
Nov. 19, 1863

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In my experience, days that have truly historic significance rarely begin with any clue that something special is going to happen.

Take Sept. 11, 2001, for example. When I think of that day, I think of how truly ordinary it was when I drove to work that morning. There was no hint that anything unusual was about to happen — until the radio mentioned an apparent airplane crash at the World Trade Center.

I'm not old enough to remember the day John F. Kennedy was shot, but I have read a lot about it, and the accounts I have read suggest that there was no indication that morning that anything was going to happen — at lunchtime or any other time.

Sometimes big events are anticipated, but nobody really knows when they will happen — like the fall of the Berlin wall or Richard Nixon's resignation.

Sometimes, of course, there is advance notice that something historic will happen at a certain time on a certain day. When I was a child, I followed the Apollo 11 moon landing — as did everyone, frankly — with great interest. And, if you followed their mission schedule, you knew when the astronauts were scheduled to land on the moon and take their first steps. There was no element of surprise, just the sensation that all the people in the country, if not the world, were holding their collective breath waiting for the Eagle to land or Neil Armstrong to take that giant leap for mankind.

Even in the annals of unexpectedly important events, the Gettysburg Address, which Abraham Lincoln delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa., 150 years ago today, holds a unique place in American history.

(Few speeches have begun as memorably: "Four score and seven years ago ...")

It was in that speech that Lincoln re–defined the objective of the Civil War. It began as an effort to keep the Union together. But, after Lincoln gave this speech, it was about abolishing slavery. That was what he meant when he spoke of a "new birth of freedom."

It had been the official policy of the Union since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but it became the focal point of the war effort after Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg.

As I wrote last summer on the 150th anniversary of the start of the battle, I remember when my classmates and I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address and deliver it in class. I took my turn at reciting the speech, just like everyone else, but I don't know if I gave much thought to the words or what they meant.

I don't remember it as some kind of epiphany. I didn't feel anything unique when I was called to the front of the room to deliver the speech. Well, my stomach was a little queasy ...

Heck, I was a teenager. I was nervous about having to stand in front of a room full of my peers and say anything. But I committed it to memory, and I recited it, just as everyone else did.

Years later, I could still recall all the words upon hearing a single sentence, even a single phrase, from the speech. And then the talk about a rebirth of freedom had more of an impact on me.

I realized that Lincoln was not talking about the past, about the sacrifices that the soldiers on both sides had made at Gettysburg. He had turned his attention to the future. Like spouses renewing their wedding vows and re–pledging themselves to each other, with a deeper understanding of what the commitment meant, Lincoln urged the people of his own time and the generations to come to periodically renew their commitment to freedom.

But Lincoln's actual words were "a new birth of freedom," and I interpret that to mean an expansion of freedom to those who had not experienced it — primarily the slaves. Lincoln had already issued the Emancipation Proclamation; the Gettysburg Address confirmed it as an objective of the war.

As I said before, that wasn't the objective when the war began. But it became one 150 years ago today.

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Maybe that is the special quality of the Gettysburg Address. It had the power to move people at the time it was delivered — well, except for Lincoln — and it can have the same influence in a sort of delayed reaction, kind of like those time–release capsules you take when you're sick.

Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln reported that the president was not pleased with his speech — which was a rather last–minute assignment. Edward Everett of Massachusetts, one of the great American orators of the 19th century, was the featured speaker, and he spoke for two hours. Lincoln followed with his two–minute address.

"That speech won't scour," Lincoln told his bodyguard after he concluded and sat down. "It is a flat failure, and the people are disappointed."

To understand what Lincoln meant, it is necessary to understand something about the language of the farmers of Lincoln's boyhood. "When wet soil stuck to the mold board of a plow, they said it didn't 'scour,' " Sandburg explained.

Some of the newspapers of his day agreed with him.

"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish–watery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the president of the United States," wrote the Chicago Times.

(The Times no longer exists, but a Pennsylvania newspaper recently felt compelled to retract its 150–year–old negative review of the speech.)

But some did not.

The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, for example, wrote that few who read Lincoln's words would do so "without a moistening of the eye and a swelling of the heart."

Everett himself, in a letter to Lincoln, wrote, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as close to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

"Lincoln had translated the story of his country and the meaning of the war into words and ideas accessible to every American," wrote historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

"The child who would sleeplessly rework his father's yarns into tales comprehensible to any boy had forged for his country an ideal of its past, present and future that would be recited and memorized by students forever."

Was Gettysburg As Decisive As Historians Say?

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"If I had had Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg, I would have won that fight."

Robert E. Lee

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I think I was in ninth grade when I was required, along with everyone else, to memorize the Gettysburg Address and recite it in my civics class.

I remember little about the day when I finally had to deliver that speech; what I do remember is that my mother endured hour upon hour of listening to me practice giving that speech at home. By the time we finished, Mom probably could have delivered the speech herself — and she probably would have done a lot better than I did.

(Of course, she probably had to memorize that speech when she was a teenager, too.)

Today is not the anniversary of that speech — nor is it the anniversary of the day I delivered it in class. Today is the sesquicentennial (the 150th) anniversary of the start of the three–day Battle of Gettysburg. The Union's victory at Gettysburg (with affiliated battles in the Pennsylvania campaign of 1863) is widely believed to have been the turning point in the Civil War.

That was the premise of an excellent mockumentary that I saw several years ago called "C.S.A." It was about the alternate history of America if the South had won the Civil War — presuming the South had prevailed at Gettysburg.

This was accomplished in the movie, as I recall, when the South persuaded Britain and France to support the Confederacy, seizing the moral high ground (before the Union could do so by making the conflict about a "rebirth of freedom," to quote Lincoln in the address he delivered at Gettysburg in November of 1863).

That didn't happen, of course. Britain and France did not intercede on the South's behalf.

In two days, it will be the 150th anniversary of George Pickett's ill–advised "Pickett's Charge" in a final attempt to reverse the outcome of the battle. Apparently, that anniversary is going to be a huge deal in Gettysburg.

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The charge failed, as Gen. James Longstreet had predicted, and the South never really recovered from the setback.

Robert E. Lee believed that he would have won the battle if Stonewall Jackson — Lee's right arm — had been alive. But Jackson was killed about two months earlier in the Confederates' victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Confederate losses at Chancellorsville had been heavy — not as heavy as the Union's but heavy nonetheless. And, as far as Lee was concerned, the loss of Jackson made it a costly win indeed. He still had Longstreet, of course, but Jackson had been his finest commander, capable of quickly and accurately assessing battlefield situations and identifying weaknesses that could be exploited.

In Lee's eyes, he was irreplaceable.

No one will ever know if the South could have won the Battle of Gettysburg if Jackson had still been alive — or if Jackson could have kept casualties down. But we do know that, without him, it was the bloodiest battle of the war with roughly 50,000 casualties combined.

And no one can say with any certainty that Gettysburg alone was as decisive as it is said to have been. It was, to be sure, the largest of the war, but, as a student of history, I have always felt that it was Gettysburg and the series of battles in and around Vicksburg, Miss., at the same time that combined to deal the South a setback from which it never recovered.

While Lee, Longstreet and Pickett were trying to turn things around in Pennsylvania, Lt. Gen. John Pemberton's Confederate troops were engaged in a nearly seven–week battle for Vicksburg with Ulysses S. Grant's Union troops. When the Confederates, who had been cut off from reinforcements and supplies for most of that time, finally surrendered on July 4, 1863, the Union controlled the Mississippi River and the supply route it provided.

In most ways, the value of the Gettysburg campaign was symbolic. It effectively ended the notion that Lee was invincible — an important psychological hurdle for the Union troops.

That doesn't mean the defeat at Gettysburg wasn't costly for the Confederates in a very real sense. The number of casualties alone was staggering for the Southern cause.

But the loss of vital supply lines at Vicksburg had a very real impact on the daily lives of all Confederates. Strategically, I have to think Vicksburg was the more meaningful victory.

Those two Union triumphs demonstrated that the Union had deeper pockets when it came to both personnel and firepower and that it was far better equipped for a long–term engagement.

The war went on for nearly two more years, but the South never mounted an offensive attack again. All its subsequent military moves were defensive in nature.

When I was a child, my family frequently planned summer vacation road trips that took us to Civil War battlefields, and I remember walking around the grounds, observing the statues that had been erected in memory of the fallen and touring the museums that were often on the sites.

There probably wasn't anything special about the Gettysburg battlefield when we were there. It was like most of the others we had seen. What was different was what it represented in the story of the Civil War, the reputation it has for being a game changer.

Its place in American history may also account for all the tales of ghost sightings in the area.

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One of the more persistent of such stories concerns Devil's Den, a boulder–strewn ridge south of Gettysburg that was the scene of some of the most intense fighting of the battle.

For me, Devil's Den has always been one of the most fascinating parts of the three–day battle of Gettysburg. That dates back to the first time I heard about it — when I was a kid.

I was probably 8 or 9 when my family visited the Gettysburg battlefield, and Devil's Den was like an outdoor playground. There were boulders to climb — the same ones from which Union snipers picked off Confederate soldiers down below. There were caves. Some of the boulders and caves were restricted, probably for safety reasons, but there were many others that were not.

I'm sure it was a lot more fun for my brother (who is three years younger than I) and me than it was for the Confederates who tried to take it 150 years ago.

Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood (for whom Fort Hood in Texas is named) was assigned by Lee to assault Devil's Den. Hood didn't like the assignment and requested a different one that he believed had a greater chance of success, but he was turned down repeatedly.

Hood's assault began in the late afternoon of July 2, but battlefield factors (probably the 19th–century equivalent of the "fog of war") diverted his remaining troops from their intended course, and they wound up joining other Confederate forces in their assault on Little Round Top.

Even 150 years later, people try to rationalize the Battle for Little Round Top. Michael Rubinkam of the Associated Press writes of topographic evidence that suggests Lee didn't realize how many Union troops there were on that ridge.

Little Round Top is still regarded as the crucial defensive effort for the Union that day. Col. Joshua Chamberlain of Maine directed his troops, who were low on ammunition, to mount a downhill bayonet charge that completely caught the Confederates off guard.

A day of glory for Chamberlain was a day of loss for Hood, who not only lost the conflict but the use of his left arm as well.

Hood was a career soldier with a reputation for courage and a fighting spirit, but some said those qualities bordered on a careless disregard for consequences. Attacking Devil's Den had not been his choice, but he was determined to give it the best he and his men had.

A college professor by training, Chamberlain was praised and promoted for his daring at Little Round Top. After the war, he returned to Maine where, in part because of his exploits, he was elected governor four times and served as teacher and president at his alma mater, Bowdoin College.

What a difference a day made in the lives of those two men — and, perhaps, in the life of a nation.

The High Ground

One of my favorite movies of the last 20 years is 1993's "Gettysburg."

It was a long movie — more than four hours — but I guess it had to be that long if it was going to do justice to what may well be the most important and most decisive event in American history. Many historians believe — and I am inclined to agree — that victory at Gettysburg paved the way for the Union's eventual triumph over the Confederacy.

I have not done a comprehensive study of the Battle of Gettysburg, but I do know, from what I have read, that there were many examples of heroism and sacrifice on both sides in that battle. Most of those who fought in it had no idea what to expect, but, if the story told in the movie was accurate, there was at least one person who thought he knew how things would play out before the battle truly began.

There is a scene, early in the movie, when Union cavalry officer John Buford (played by Sam Elliott) essentially chooses the spot for the confrontation, establishing a defensive perimeter on the tactically critical "high ground" of Gettysburg's Cemetery Ridge.

He has spotted the approaching Confederate army and sent a message asking for support, but he worries that those support troops will not arrive in time.

Pessimistically, Buford tells a colleague that he can see how the battle will play out — as if gazing into a crystal ball.

"You know what's going to happen here in the morning?" he asks. "The whole damn reb army is going to be here. They'll move through this town, occupy these hills on the other side and when our people get here, Lee will have the high ground. ...

"Meade will come in slowly, cautiously. New to command. They'll be on his back in Washington. ... So he will set up a ring around these hills. And when Lee's army is nicely entrenched behind fat rocks on the high ground, Meade will finally attack, if he can coordinate the army. ... We will charge valiantly ... and be butchered valiantly! And afterwards men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chest and say what a brave charge it was.

"I've led a soldier's life, and I've never seen anything as brutally clear as this."

And his vision was very nearly fulfilled — except that both sides were "butchered" and victory ultimately went to the Union, thanks in large part to Buford's foresight.

The charge he foresaw did happen — but Pickett's Charge, as it is known in the history books, was carried out by the South.

If Buford had not held the high ground until other Union forces could arrive, the battle might have been won by the South — and the story of the last century and a half might have been dramatically different.

I don't know if Elliott's monologue was some sort of literary device (perhaps created by Michael Shaara in the historical novel upon which the movie was based) or if Buford really had some sort of premonition (and just couldn't see clearly enough to tell which side would be vanquished), but I know the nagging feeling of a troubling and seemingly inevitable vision of the future.

It is truly a relief, isn't it, when it turns out that such a vision was faulty, but the mind certainly can run wild when it is allowed to do so. Fear has a way of doing that to people.

In more ways than most people probably could imagine at the time, FDR was right when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

I guess fear really is what motivates most people to do most things. And fear is undoubtedly behind the polarization of modern American politics — not necessarily racial fear, although that is a component, as is religious anxiety, divisions over gender–related issues, fear of immigrants of all kinds, generation gaps, but fear in general (and, to be fair, fear of some specific things, too).

Everyone fears something. Buford — or, at least, Buford's character — feared losing the high ground, feared defeat. His fears turned out to be unfounded.

He held the high ground, thanks to some creative strategy (and, I guess, a little good fortune, too) — but there was a period when his success was not certain.

In the 21st century, it seems to me that none of America's leaders on either side of the political fence are holding the moral high ground.

I'm sure they would all protest that assertion. They would say they are motivated by and for all kinds of good things. But fear is really what is at the heart of it all.

Fear is why the outsiders (the Republicans) warn of the dire consequences of the Democrats' policies — and why the Democrats warn against the extremism inherent in the outsiders' politics.

Both sides are afraid of losing — for different reasons.

And, to be sure, there are very good reasons why both sides should take the other seriously — and earnestly try to avoid any sort of sense of complacency about 2012. In the past, there has usually been a large group of swing voters, but this time things are different. People have been taking sides, and there is little room for error.

The parties do need to win over those who really haven't decided, but there don't seem to be many of them, once you get past those who say they are undecided but that they are leaning to one side or another. That means that the challenge will be to motivate the bases, the true believers, and make sure they get to the polls.

Mark my words. Next year's election will be about mobilizing the faithful, and that could get rough. Scare tactics are likely to be used to a greater extent than voters have seen. It ain't gonna be pretty.

America will never choose an extremist challenger over an incumbent, Democrats tell each other reassuringly. Really? Perhaps they have forgotten that Ronald Reagan was portrayed as a wild–eyed extremist who couldn't wait to get his itchy trigger finger on the nuclear button when he was nominated to run against Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Extremists of both stripes were spectacularly unsuccessful in the years before Reagan came along, but they were usually perceived as threatening in some way. Reagan had an amiable personality that drew people to him, even many who disagreed with him.

Today, Reagan is held up as a model by both sides. Republicans, understandably, remember him as popular and successful, the embodiment of conservative values, and they are nostalgic for those days.

And Democrats, who are just as understandably eager to be free of the burden of a troublesome economy and high unemployment, remember that Reagan rebounded from the recession that plagued his first term to win re–election by a landslide. While they are busy reminding voters that the son of Reagan's vice president was in charge when the economy imploded, Democrats will be seeking to emulate the tactics the Gipper used to overcome economic concerns during his successful re–election campaign.

They seem to have conveniently forgotten what really elected Reagan in the first place — individual answers to his question in his only debate with Carter in 1980. "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

Not many Americans would answer in the affirmative today.

Until 1980, Republicans were generally considered moderate, but they linked arms with the Tea Party of their day, the "Moral Majority," in what was seen by centrists and liberals as a nationally unacceptable lurch to the right.

Many of the Democrats I knew scoffed in the summer and fall of 1980 — but they weren't scoffing in November when the Republicans won the presidency and the Senate.

Today's Democrats sound just as certain as their forebears did 30 years ago that Americans are too knowledgeable, too sophisticated to be taken in by what they see as the lunatic fringe.

Nevertheless, the insiders are hedging their bets with a little bribery in the form of 60 million barrels of oil from the International Energy Agency.

In the short term, that might be a good move, but it seems likely to be delayed gratification — considerably delayed. The influence on prices at the pump, like the delayed implementation of the health care package, won't be felt immediately and might not be seen until you start making your plans for Labor Day — which is usually long after most Americans have gone on their summer vacations.

Don't get me wrong. Americans who need to get away from home for a little while should do so — for their own good as well as the businesses that cater to tourists — but many, I am sure, have put such thoughts on the shelf in the face of $4/gallon gas. A break at the pump might encourage more to get away to the beach, to amusement parks, to ball games.

I'm sure that is the kind of thing that Obama and other Democratic politicians would like to see. But the timing is way off. Here we are, nearly halfway through summer, and this policy, which I have heard will not be felt at the pump until August, is only now being enacted.

This isn't something that happened overnight. Gas prices have been rising steadily for months. And, as Jordy Yager writes in The Hill, it is a plan that has been in the works for nearly two months.

But a lot of time was wasted back in February and March and April, when Ben Bernanke was insisting the price increases would be temporary. (Obama's confidence in Bernanke may have been misplaced. He conceded this week that he does not know why growth has been so sparse — which doesn't seem like the kind of thing the Federal Reserve chairman should be saying — even if it is true.)

I'm no economist, but even I know that if you want consumers to get a summer boost from your economic policies, you can't wait this long. You have to prime the pump long before that.

Well, prices will drop a bit as a result, but who knows how long the good feelings will last? Will prices remain artificially suppressed until you go over the meadow and through the woods to grandma's house at Thanksgiving or Christmas?

If this isn't politically motivated — like those "rebates" the Bush administration foolishly gave to every American in the months just before September 11 — what is it?

Supposedly, this is intended to make up for the disruption of supplies from Libya — but prices were already going down, not as rapidly as folks would like but they have been dropping.

The administration protests that this is not political — but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ...

The president does seem to be recognizing, perhaps belatedly, the symbolic value of gestures — and that is what this appears to be. After all, 60 million barrels of oil sounds like a lot — and it is — but, realistically, it wouldn't keep the engines in this country running for a week.

It is, however, something he can mention during the campaign, a weapon in his arsenal. But he should be careful about using it. It could backfire.

That doesn't change the fact that this president, who has spoken so eloquently in the past of changing our energy priorities and breaking free of our dependence on nonrenewable energy sources, is treating a symptom, not the disease, with this policy.

Releasing all those barrels of oil will do nothing to promote Obama's energy objectives — but it will put more money in people's pockets. They might not be able to spend it on a family trip to Disney World, but they might feel inclined to contribute it to his re–election campaign. And it might improve his approval ratings for awhile.

But it isn't likely to change the fact that most people believe the country has veered off on the wrong track — and polls consistently show that, by at least a 2–to–1 ratio, more people think the country is going in the wrong direction than the right one.

As for the Republicans, well, their presidential field is more conservative than it was four years ago — and, normally, I would see that as a negative — but prevailing conditions at the time of an election usually have a lot to do with the outcome and, if things seem bleak to voters in November 2012, they are likely to vote for someone new.

That's the way things are done in America. Incumbents usually get the credit for good economies or the blame for bad ones.

James Carville writes that, no matter how tempting it clearly is for Democrats, blaming the Bush administration for the poor economy is not wise. And he is right. It was OK in the early days of the Obama presidency, but after 2½ years, like it or not, this economy belongs to this president.

A couple of years from now, in early July 2013, America will mark the sesquicentennial of that three–day battle in Gettysburg. Whoever is president at that time will undoubtedly come to Pennsylvania for whatever will be done to mark the anniversary.

We should have a better idea at that time if he or she held the high ground in 2012 — and whether he/she continued to do so after Inaugural Day.

The 'What-Ifs' of History

For a student of American history, there may be no more compelling mind game than the "what-if" questions.

They reverberate through our nation's history, urging us to contemplate the road not taken.

Kenneth Walsh of U.S. News & World Report has begun exploring the "what-ifs" of our national political experience in weekly installments on U.S. News' web site.

Each Wednesday through September, Walsh is writing about the 10 most consequential elections in our nation's history.

The first two installments have focused on the elections that put Abraham Lincoln in the White House. In Walsh's first article, posted on July 23, he wrote about the 1860 election, in which Lincoln was first elected to the White House.

Shortly after Lincoln's election, Southern states began to secede. In what may be a classic understatement, Walsh observes, "Lincoln immediately was thrown into the cauldron of crisis."

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If that is Part I of the story, Part II follows in the July 30 article, which examines Lincoln's re-election in 1864 and how it contributed to the North's successful conclusion of the Civil War.

For Lincoln, re-election was public vindication of his war policies. It's something that might not have happened if the North hadn't defeated the South at Gettysburg in 1863.

Union victories became more numerous in 1863, "and the North's military success became the most important political development of the 1864 presidential campaign," writes Walsh.

"Perhaps most gratifying to Lincoln, the soldiers doing the fighting gave [him] a huge margin ... even though they knew that re-electing Lincoln would mean continuation of the conflict and the likelihood that many of them would be killed or wounded," Walsh writes. "But they also knew that re-electing Lincoln would virtually guarantee victory, complete with the end of slavery and the preservation of the Union, and these were their top priorities."

Walsh concludes, "In the end, Lincoln's profound legacy was created and propelled by two elections — the one in 1860, which triggered the war, and the election of 1864, which enabled Lincoln to win it."

If those two elections were the bottom two on Walsh's list, I look forward to reading about the other eight.

A Turning Point in American History

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History is just full of "what if" scenarios.

For most people, those "what ifs" form the basis for some interesting parlor games — speculation on what might have happened if this, that or the other thing had occurred before — or instead of — something else.

(Fifty years ago, such scenarios formed — from time to time — the foundations for intriguing stories on Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone TV series.)

Today is the anniversary of such an event. On this day, 145 years ago, Union forces withstood Pickett's Charge and won the Battle of Gettysburg. History tells us the Union changed the course of the Civil War with that victory.

And, even though President Lincoln said, at the dedication of Gettysburg's military cemetery later in 1863, that the world would "little note nor long remember" the things that were said on that day, long after the smoke of battle had cleared away and the town of Gettysburg had returned to its normally placid state, I can remember being assigned to memorize the Gettysburg Address in my ninth grade civics class.

I don't know if they do that in the schools of America anymore. But I can assure you that, when I was 15 years old, I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address, go up to the front of the classroom and recite it when it my name was called.

I think there were about 25 people in my civics class, so that meant that, eventually, everyone would recite it for the class — and have to listen to two dozen other people recite the same speech.

Some people delivered their remarks in a flat, dull monotone. Others tried to rush through, tumbling over the words as if in a race to beat Lincoln's time.

And a few (who possessed a flair for the dramatic) tried to give the speech as if they had been transformed into Lincoln himself, making his remarks for the first time and leaving it to history to judge the appropriateness of each word.

They were the ones who — for a few minutes, at least — made the past come alive for us in that dusty old classroom.

We certainly remembered Lincoln's words in that classroom that semester, more than a century after he spoke them. In fact, I can still remember most of that speech — the same one I memorized more than 30 years ago.

It is testimony to the power of the Union's triumph in that battle that it remains the ultimate "what if" scenario from the Civil War.

The 1993 film "Gettysburg" is a faithful re-creation of the story of that battle, of the heroism and valor shown by combatants on both sides.

If you want to see historic events depicted as they really happened, "Gettysburg" is one of those films I recommend — the same as I recommend "Tora! Tora! Tora!" to anyone who wants to see what the attack on Pearl Harbor was really like.

But if you're interested in pure speculation, I suggest watching "Confederate States of America," a mockumentary that didn't fare too well at the box office a few years ago. But the Independent Film Channel bought the rights to the film, and now IFC shows the film from time to time on its cable channel and it owns the distribution rights for home video.

It tells the story of what might have happened if the South had won the war. It's presented with the kind of quality one would expect from a History Channel presentation.

The story of how the South was able to reverse the outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg is only the beginning of an entertaining, thought-provoking — and, at times, disturbing — alternate version of American history.

The film is presented as a legitimate documentary that was produced by a BBC-like broadcasting company, but it has been banned from American television for a couple of years and is being aired in this country for the first time — with a disclaimer at the beginning and interruptions from several commercials that are parodies of actual products and their advertisements.

You've got a couple of opportunities to see the movie on IFC this month. You can see it tonight at 10:45 p.m. (Eastern) and again early tomorrow morning at 4 a.m. (Eastern). It will be shown a third time on Saturday, July 26 at 7:25 p.m. (Eastern).