Skepticism must be the order of the day. So that when Benioff asks what would the world have looked like
if the South had won, we should not hesitate to ask what Benioff means by the South. He obviously does not mean the minority of white Southern unionists, who did win. And he does not mean those four million enslaved blacks, whom the Civil War ultimately emancipated, yet whose victory was tainted. Comprising 40 percent of the Confederacys population, this was the Souths indispensable laboring class, its chief resource, its chief source of wealth, and the sole reason why a Confederacy existed in the first place. But they are not the subject of Benioffs inquiry, because he is not so much asking about the South winning, so much as he is asking about the white South winning.