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->''"The Civil War defined America.\\
Both the good and the bad.\\
It was the crossroads of our being,\\
and it was a hell of a crossroads."''
-->-- '''Shelby Foote'''

->''"Who would have thought there was a comedy in all that?\\
Well, we did.\\
We were fortunate to acquire an extraordinary historical document. ''The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer'' -- the "P" isn't silent -- chronicles the life and times of a member of President Lincoln's staff at the height of the Civil War.\\
Pfeiffer, an English nobleman, claimed that he and his trusted man-servant were forced by rival noblemen to flee to America due to a dispute over the queen...all 5 of them.\\
The rest, as they say, is history.\\
Everything that follows actually happened...you can't prove that it didn't."''
-->-- The opening preamble to the series

''The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer'' was a very short-lived and controversial sitcom on Creator/{{UPN}} that only aired four episodes, all of which were in October 1998. Starred Creator/ChiMcBride as the titular character, a ServileSnarker Black English nobleman and butler who is kidnapped and sent to America on a slave ship, then becomes a valet in UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln's White House. He finds himself being the OnlySaneMan in Lincoln's staff, which is full of morons. Think ''Series/{{Benson}}'' set in the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Civil War]] era.

The series is extremely rare, never having been released on home video or in reruns, due to its extremely controversial nature. The NAACP led a protest against the show, citing its arguably light-hearted portrayal of the enslavement of African-Americans, and forced the pilot episode to be pulled. The now-defunct cable network Trio was set to rerun the show during the TurnOfTheMillennium as part of its "Flops" block (which also reran ''Series/CopRock'', ''Series/PinkLadyAndJeff'' and ''Series/MyMotherTheCar''), but eventually backed out. Appropriately enough, for a show that was both critically panned and low rated (the reason it was cancelled), it was proudly advertised with the tagline "[[TakeThatCritics Critics hate it]]."

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!!The series provides examples of the following tropes:

* ActorAllusion: In "Up, Up And Away", Creator/ShermanHemsley plays Colonel Reginald [[Series/TheJeffersons Jefferson]], who tells Lincoln "You better get movin' on up, sir".
* HistoricalDowngrade: This show turns Honest Abe into a perverted buffoon, likely as a parody of UsefulNotes/BillClinton.
* OnlySaneMan: Desmond is the only person in the White House who has any kind of common sense.
* OohMeAccentsSlipping: As Desmond enters America, he seems to lose his English accent.
* SecretHistory: The series' main idea is that the Lincoln administration was much more stupid [[WrittenByTheWinners than history wishes to remember it.]]
%% * ServileSnarker: Desmond Pfeiffer.
%% * StraightMan: Desmond.
%% * TakeThat: One to the Clinton administration in light of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the first episode, "AOL: Abe Online".
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