Pleasehelpmejesus, what you talking about?
The movie (you aint been following very well, I reckon) was based on a novel, Daniel Wooodrell's Woe to Live On, wich it adapted with great accuracy. You might take it for a flaw, that it does not blend with today's highly anticipated political correctness, wich it only could have done by reversing, or even denying its approach on historical accuracy.
A war was fought, and war is land and wealth and little else. Never was, never will be.
Idealism, like in this case the freedom of the slaves, is politicians talk to justify aggressive behavior with a noble cause. As important as this cause was and still is, the Union Armies would not have marched a mile south, had it been the only purpose.
Also it was neither the writer's nor the director's intend to paint the great picture of slavery in the south (a terrific thing, but not the topic of neither book nor movie), nor an overall image of the civil war, but to tell the tale of the struggle between irregular bands of the South and the North on both sides of the Missouri/Kansas border.
The movie tries not for an objective account, as all mayor protagonists were men of the south, and the story is told but from their points of view.
And the movie works not because we care about their cause, but about themselves.
Of course it was quite unusual for black men to walk free and fully armed in the South, is why the J. Wright character, Daniel Holt, once the fighting started, got his guns handled over by George Clyde, and returned them, once the shooting was over. After Clyde's death Holt stays armed, but only among men he knew and fought alongside, and who knew him too for at least the last two or so years.
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