Based on history? or political correctness?

Out of curiosity, what was politically correct about the movie? If anything, it went against the grain of the "civil war was about slavery" garbage that has been forced down our throats for the past hundred years.

The hero of the story is a antiwar democrat who thinks the secession is legal and the Northern attack on the South is unconstitutional. He doesn't believe in the North war. The Copperheads were real so that is historical fact but the message of the story does fit in well with Liberal attitudes about war today so its kind of a mixed message film. So in short its a historical politically correct anti war film basically.

As for the deeper causes of the Civil War, the south and those friendly to their cause will say it was about state rights, and that is partially correct. What they leave out is what they considered states rights was slavery and when Lincoln won his election, on a platform of containing slavery, they were done with the union because in their eyes slavery and the decisions about it were a matter of states rights.

Of course you can always argue the Northern armed response was illegal but then perhaps so was the secession so there really isn't a easy answer.

All I know is had the South won their independence a lot of things would be different today. Some of this is written by Harry Turtledove in his alternate civil war books which I think does a good job showing we likely wouldn't have seen a better world, far from it.