This is an awfully complex debate. I don't know what I think about it... Reading about the Civil War left me feeling morally quite confused about the whole situation. Obviously slavery is wrong, but the North is quite repulsive in parts too.

I think... I don't think that writing sci fi that uses the Confederacy as very partial inspiration, without slavery, is wrong. Writing historical or 'what if' fiction without it would be, but Firefly is not that.

American history is often very readable, I have found : they don't seem to have the English historian's belief that Short Easy Sentences Are Wrong.