Burns Refutes Kelly: Slavery Only Cause of Civil War

Ken Burns, creator of the 1990 TV documentary miniseries on the Civil War, declared slavery alone caused the war – refuting chief of staff John Kelly's assertion a "lack of an ability to compromise" led to the conflict.

The White House chief of staff's comments Monday created a firestorm of criticism from historians, and a scorching denunciation from the Congressional Black Caucus, which said Kelly "needs a history lesson."

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, however, defended the remarks Tuesday.

"I do know that many historians, including Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' famous Civil War documentary, agreed a failure to compromise was a cause of the Civil War," she said, The Hill reported.

"There are a lot of historians that think that, and there a lot of different versions of those compromises. I'm not going to get up here and relitigate the Civil War, but there's certainly, I think some historical documentation that many people . . . believe that if some of the individuals engaged had been willing to come to some compromises on different things then it may not have occurred."

Burns, in a second tweet on the subject, posted a quote from historian Barbara Fields at the end of his documentary.

"Historian Barbara Fields ended the film: 'the Civil War is still going on. It's still to be fought and regrettably it can still be lost,'" he tweeted.

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