Confederate States Of America (2005)

Yahoo Movies ^ | 12/31/04 | Me

[Caipirabob]

What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?

While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.

Stars with bars:

Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.

Some things are better left dead in the past:

For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.

Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.

Compelling story or KKK wet dream?:

So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?

Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.

This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.

Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.

At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.

So what do you think of this movie?

[4CJ]

As a judge he went beyond legality and gave an opinion he had not business giving and a wrong opinion at that.

US Naturalization laws since our founding applied only to whites. The decision was 7-2 siding with the Chief Justice.

Regarding your asinine and ludicrous assertion that the COURTS have no business issuing legal decisions, do you believe they should be issued by The President?

[4CJ]

'... it is my Will and desire that all who come under the first and second description shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live; and that such of the latter description as have no parents living, or if living are unable, or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until they shall arrive at the age of twenty-five years; and in cases where no record can be produced, whereby their ages can be ascertained, the Judgment of the Court, upon its own view of the subject, shall be adequate & final. The negroes thus bound, are (by their Masters or Mistresses), to be taught to read and write; & to be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of orphan & other poor Children. And I do hereby expressly forbid the sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever.'

Gee, George expressed his desire that they be freed - not simply sold off - and provided for them both in food, clothing and education.

How cruel. </sarcasm>

[lentulusgracchus]

Jamaica was like that in the 19th century, but the British had cleverly changed the racial system to a class system and provided for "passing" of persons of "some" African ancestry as white -- "statutory whites" (the children of an octoroon person and a white person). This defused racial discontent to some extent, just enough to give "colored" (mulatto and lighter blacks) a stake in the social system, which thus divided the entire nonwhite population and made it governable, in contrast to the volatility and ultimate untenability of the situation in Haiti. There was a large slave revolt in Jamaica in the 19th century, but the British weathered it by the same devices they'd employed in the Jacobite rising of the previous century, when Scots loyal to the Crown did the most damage to their countrymen at Culloden. (I almost lost a necessary ancestor in that shambles.)

When Marcus Garvey began teaching racial solidarity at the end of the 19th century, it was Jamaica's higher-class, lighter-skinned colored society that sent him packing.

[lentulusgracchus]

Flush with ownership of railroads and shipping lines, protected in their carriage of freight by federal laws mandating that cargoes be carried in American bottoms in the coastwise trade, and sucking mightily on the sugar-teat of the 1848 Warehouse Act's favorable tax provisions, New York business interests weren't about to give up their constricting grip on the sweet deal of a lifetime.

The South got between a bunch of Yankee merchants and a New York payday -- between bottomlessly avaricious men and unimaginable wealth. With Yankee businessmen on this side of the room and a vast pile of bullion on the other, the South simply got run over.

Or, to use an astrophysical analogy, the South's situation was rather like living between two mutually-attractive, rapidly accelerating planetary objects -- big ones.

What scholarship needs to do is to get into the flow of communication among the leading New York banks and merchant houses, on the one hand, and its friends in the Lincoln Administration on the other -- Seward and Cameron, specifically, and perhaps also Salmon P. Chase, he of the flexuous jurisprudence -- and among themselves, and between them and their mouthpiece newspapers in New York and Boston.

What do you think -- would that be an apt subject for discussion?

Some Astor and Vanderbilt diaries might be terrifically revealing, as well. Or how about that fellow you dug up, that very busy, railroading, ambassadorial, Supreme Court Clerk?

[PaRebel]

My suspicion has been that lincoln was the "tool"(witting or unwitting) of these very men of which you speak.

[4CJ]

Some Astor and Vanderbilt diaries might be terrifically revealing, as well.

I would think such would have been purged of anything incriminating long ago.

[M. Espinola]

Your photos do not work and neither do your theories

[M. Espinola]

So what did you discover under your bed? LOL

[M. Espinola]

Antebellum period throwback. A couple of friends of mine are here reviewing your posts. Why don't you come up to hood and discuss all the issues you have with 'Negrophobia'.

[M. Espinola]

National African American History Month, 2005 A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

Throughout our Nation's history, the contributions of African Americans have stirred our Nation's conscience and helped shape our character. During National African American History Month, we honor the determination and commitment of generations of African Americans in pursuing the promises of America.

The theme of National African American History Month this year, "The Niagara Movement: Black Protest Reborn, 1905-2005," honors the grassroots movement of 1905 to 1910 that was organized to fight racial discrimination in America. Led by W.E.B. DuBois, the movement called for voting rights for African Americans, opposed school segregation, and worked to elect officials committed to fighting racial prejudice. Americans today carry on this movement as our Nation strives to live up to our founding principle that all of God's children are created equal.

It is important to teach our children about the heroes of the civil rights movement who, with courage and dignity, forced America to confront the central defect of our founding. Every American should know about the men and women whose determination and persistent eloquence forced people of all races to examine their hearts and revise our Nation's Constitution and laws. As we celebrate African American History Month, we remember how great the struggle for racial justice has been. And we renew our efforts to fight for equal rights for all Americans. We have made great progress, but our work is not done.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim February 2005 as National African American History Month. I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities that honor the history, accomplishments, and contributions of African Americans.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twentyninth.

GEORGE W. BUSH

[M. Espinola]

"The worst parts of racism were not a legacy of slavery, but of Reconstruction."

Once again, yet another incredible one liner from the imaginary Neo-Confed-Land crowd. :)

[M. Espinola]

If ...the victor in the Civil War had been reversed....once again we are dealing in the total realm of the hypothetical....if the Confederates had overthrown the U.S. government and gained a military advantage the pro-slavery insurrectionist regimé would have attempted to introduce slavery into western territories and southern portions of Free States.

Naturally the enemy would not be capable of forcing individual Northern citizens "people to own slaves", but the enemy would have tried to expand the geographical zones of institutionalized plantation slavery...and would have failed due to public outrage.

Those who were not in favour of the cessation of slavery, were either disgracefully indifferent, or pro-slavery.

President Bush as repeated stated, if one is not against the (Islamic) terrorists, then one IS a terrorist. The same logic applies to the slavery issue. It's yes, or no.

[lentulusgracchus]

I think, witting. Stories about how he dealt deftly with interference and overreaching by e.g. Seward, tend to cut against him if the subject turns to sub-rosa politics.

I want to know why Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts regiments were ready "at the jump" the minute Lincoln delivered his speech.

The Pennsylvania troops transiting through Baltimore on the night of the riots were not yet armed -- apparently they were being rushed to D.C. and were to draw arms there -- but the Sixth Mass was ready to take the field, and in fact the Fourth Mass went straight into the field, occupying Fort Monroe in Virginia just a few days after Lincoln's call for troops.

I want to know if these guys were in fact Wide Awakes.

None of these regiments went with McDowell to Bull Run, by the way, according to Longstreet's endnote to the chapter, in which he records the order of battle. The Fighting 69th New York was there, under William Sherman, as were the two Rhode Island regiments, under Burnside, that two years later made a famous counter against Pickett's men at Gettysburg.

[M. Espinola]

Nice outfit, is Abe wearing Gucci or Dior?

lololol Forget old Abe, with all those babes in the background