Posted on 07/30/2013 7:15:08 AM PDT by NotYourAverageDhimmi
Conservatives are grabbing popcorn and lining up to catch a new historical drama with modern connections.
“Copperhead,” the new film from director Ron Maxwell, focuses on the Northern opponents of the American Civil War and stars Billy Campbell, Angus MacFadyen and Peter Fonda.
At least one conservative — Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com — emailed his audience to tell it about the movie “that every conservative needs to see.”
“[W]hile Copperhead is about the Civil War, believe me, it will hit close to home for every conservative fighting to preserve our Constitution and our American way of life,” Viguerie wrote. “Because Copperhead is about standing up for faith, for America, and for what’s right, just like you and I are doing today. In fact, I’ve never seen a movie with more references to the Constitution, or a movie that better sums up our current fight to stand up for American values and get our nation back on track.”
The movie, which is based on the novel by Harold Frederic, follows Abner Beech, a New York farmer who doesn’t consider himself a Yankee, and is against slavery and war in general.
Asked about whether he sees his film as conservative, Maxwell told POLITICO, “I think if ‘Copperhead’ has any relevance at all, in addition to illuminating a time and place from our common heritage, it’s as a cinematic meditation on the price of dissent. I’ve never thought of dissent as a political act belonging to the right or left. It’s an act of liberty, expression of the rights of a free person — free not just in law but free from the confines and pressures of the tyranny of the majority.”
Maxwell said while the concept of dissent is as “old as time,” in the U.S., “it’s protected in the Constitution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Tell that to Anderson.
Boy, talk about dishonest.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.
The demand to have continued authority to rape, kidnap, torture of the slave masters is not a higher power, but perhaps a lower power.
Lincoln hoped that they would be touched by the better angels. Alas, the southron’s were convinced by the worser demons.
At least you admit that the pretended state right to secession is nowhere in the constitution.
There may be hope for you.
Some derive it from the 10th Amendment, right next to the right to green cheese delivered on sundays from the moon at no cost.
No civil war stuff for me today. Enjoy your Saturday.
No civil war stuff for me today. Enjoy your Saturday.
I believe that was Robert Toombs. Or at least Toombs made such claims afterwards. I'm not sure that he thought it was a "trap" consciously set by Lincoln to make a war. He thought Davis's firing on the fort would be a bad idea (if his account afterwards was correct). Davis should have listened.
Taking a stand to avoid reproach is a manifestation of Ego.
Every president takes an oath "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution." If the president feels that secession is unconstitutional and the ruination of the country, then he or she is honor bound to at least take a stand against it. If you are president and you feel that the nation is in danger, you can't just do nothing.
Assuming that Lincoln's stand was all about his "Ego" or power is "begging the question," that is to say, you set up the problem by excluding any constitutional grounds for his position and actions -- you make it purely personal -- and having excluded all legal and constitutional reasons for his stand, you "conclude" what you've already assumed, namely that there were no valid reasons for his behaving as he did.
You can do that to any political position. You can say that the police chief pursues criminals only because of their threat to his authority. Or that Jefferson Davis suppressed dissent because it threatened his ego or that he supported secession because he thought it would preserve his power as a slaveowner. Once you recognize that you can do this to any politician or public official, it gets tired really fast.
One of the few women posters on this thread said that the Civil War was about testosterone. Both sides wanted to prove their manhood and wouldn't back down. Nowadays, "ego" and "testosterone" tend to be pejorative terms, designed to cut down the people their applied to. If we consider the words in a more neutral light as having to do with self, self-image, the defenses of the self against the world, honor, reputation, recognition, feelings of adequacy or inferiority, there may be something in it.
Respect was important to the North. If Southerners in Congress had said that they wanted to work out a settlement in Washington to dissolve their ties to the union, there might not have been a war. Not being involved in decisions affecting the fate of the country may have been a blow to Northern pride. Once the fort and the flag were assaulted -- this in an age where symbols mattered much more than today -- Unionists weren't going to take the insult lightly.
Of course, pride and honor were also important to Southerners -- so much so that they assumed that Northerners had no honor -- but in this case it was self-assertion or self-definition or autonomy that mattered. Secessionists weren't going to accept independence from anybody. They had to take it, seize it, for themselves. It was as though that act of freeing oneself by oneself was more important than the end result. Some would say this reflected the absolute master mentality of some of the secessionist firebrands.
But this is not to dismiss how much that Lincoln wanted a war. Lincoln NEEDED a war. To let the South leave peacefully would leave him as the jilted bridegroom of history.
That is hindsight. At the time, Lincoln thought Southern support for the union was stronger than it actually was. Lincoln had Southern friends from his days in Congress. His wife came from a slave owning family. He was born in a slave state. It would have been natural for him to think that a little firmness on his part would eventually make cooler heads prevail. The available evidence doesn't contradict that. It was most likely wrong, but Lincoln didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
This idea of Lincoln as the "jilted bridegroom" of history reflects the kind of thinking I referred to above. Mandela could meet with de Klerk or Jinnah and Nehru with Mountbatten or Collins and DeValera with the British authorities, but the secessionists couldn't work out a peaceful settlement without trying to humilitate the other side?*
In any case: Davis didn't want or need a war? He didn't need a war to shore up his own power base. He didn't want war to snag the Upper South for his Confederacy? He didn't start a war to slam the door on the past and make a country out of the seceded states?
Lincoln was a canny fighter, and It is a reasonable assertion that his dander was up over Southern states seceding.
Cleverer maybe than you or me or Davis. Lincoln was making legitimate moves to maintain some authority and some pretense of continuity. It was up to Davis and South Carolina to decide how they wanted to respond to those moves. They didn't have to make a war out of it. They could have responded in kind with less inflammatory measures.
You could say that Lincoln was playing "brinksmanship," the Cold War game of assertive but not aggressive or irreversible moves. Davis was apparently too bullheaded and narrowminded to recognize this, but does that make the war Lincoln's fault?
Pompous posturing. As I mentioned, not unlike the belligerent princes of Europe. The Confederates were foolish to have attacked Sumter. If they had merely sat on their hands, in a decade it would probably have been abandoned voluntarily.
After the unnecessary insult, you go on to make my point for me. The idea that Lincoln forced or fooled or tricked Davis into war is closely related to the idea that Davis had no other alternatives, that he couldn't have responded differently, that no other action on Davis's part would have had better results. If Davis had freedom of action, if there were other alternatives available to him that might have had better results, then the idea of Davis being "forced" or "fooled" into war starts to look a lot shakier.
There are a lot of degrees involved here. To say that Lincoln wanted war and tricked or fooled or forced the Confederates, who didn't want war, into one is certainly going too far. Davis pretty clearly was willing to risk war and didn't need to be tricked or forced into one. To say that Lincoln accepted that war might come and wanted to put the South in the wrong and make them the guilty party might be more like the truth. But I don't know that he really thought ahead that far. To my way of thinking he was just making moves that didn't involve surrender or complete collapse before secessionist demands.
Look at it this way. Somebody says, I don't recognize your country, but I'm not going to start a war. I'm not going to fire the first shot. If you want a war, you'll have to start it. All clearly laid out in simple English like that. You fire the first shot and then say you were tricked into it. Something isn't quite right in that charge.
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* Alright, I guess that the end of apartheid or independence for Ireland or the creation of an independent India and Pakistan did involve much violence before the eventual reconciliation, but why would you want to start such a cycle of violence when peaceful means of resolving the crisis were available?
There was still hope that the situation could be resolved peacefully -- if both sides could avoid violence or overly provocative acts.
You are faulting the US for not doing things (calling up troops, using force) that you would definitely have blamed them for if they did do them.
They didn't CHOOSE a war. You assert that this was their intent, and that is nonsense. They were just so foolish as to believe they could attack a Union Fort without there being retaliation.
The issue of Slavery may have motivated them to secession, but Lincoln informs us that it wasn't sufficient reason to induce them to stop fighting, in spite of his best efforts to concede the issue.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.
If Lincoln offered them slavery, the war was not ABOUT slavery.
Had the Confederacy not started the war then there would have been no reason for anyone to invade them.
And right there you admit the war had nothing to do with slavery. The war (from the Northern side) was a retaliation. Nothing else.
Yeah, I think i've had enough of trying to argue with you. Sometimes you say reasonable things, and the rest of what you post is just crazy talk.
Not interested in arguing with crazy talk.
The US Constitution is silent on the issue of secession. Live it, learn it, love it.
So sorry you think that the law, passed by the Congress, elected by the people is crazy.
I hope for your cure.
It is not silent on the broader issue of controvery between the states, or between the states and the federal government.
Such controveries are to be resolved by law, per Article III, with the supreme court as original jurisdiction. Because of that requirement, secession at pleasure is unconstitutional.
They chose war when they fired on Ft. Sumter.
Wasn’t addressing you.
My understanding is that US troops were already in South Carolina, and one Winfield Scott used his garrison to help put out fires in Charleston, partly defusing the crisis.
Yes, since you posted your statement on the public part of the board, you were addressing me.
If you don’t want to address me, I recommend the ‘private reply’ button.
Whatever.
No. No "Whatever." The point is a valid one. All of this pompous talk of rights, and principles, and legality is just blather. The reality is that FORCE decides what is right, not principle. We all just like to posture that we are moved by noble sentiments, but the rock bottom truth is that Power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and those who claim to be against slavery see no problem with using a gun to achieve the same purpose.
Possible, but irrelevant. Sumter was the property of the federal government. Or, if you prefer, the property of all the states not just the Southern ones. Legally the South had no right to claim it.
Once again, "Legally" = Blather. The property lay within the territorial limits of the Newly Created government, and whatever terms had originally held were abrogated by the creation of the new governing body. The refusal of new governments to honor the previous agreements of the old, has such a long history as to be considered the norm.
Had there been no war, the Fortress would have eventually been let go anyway. That being said, the Confederates were foolish to attack it. If they could have just kept their pride in check, they would have eventually had it anyway.
Slavery was the motivation for the Southern secession.
Slavery was a very major portion of their reasons for leaving, but it was not the only one. There were a whole host of issues in which Northern Domination of the legislature yielded undesirable results for the South.
War was the means they chose to further their attempts at secession.
How do I answer this? This is cockamamie nonsense, yet it is obvious that you somehow believe it. Seven states seceded before Ft. Sumter. Did they chose war? Does the act of peacefully seceding equate to choosing war?
Did they gin up their troop levels when they seceded? Did they show any other indication that they were wanting to pick a fight with an entity four times more populous and far wealthier?
Once again, they didn't CHOSE war, they were just so foolish as to think they could bombard a Union fort without getting one. What they THOUGHT would happen is that the troops would just leave, and that would be the end of it. They very foolishly miscalculated. They underestimated the hurt pride of the Union Army, and the Determination of Lincoln not to be humiliated with the loss of a large chunk of the country.
So it is accurate to state that the Confederacy launched their war to defend slavery.
No, it isn't. At best, it's the worst kind of sophistry and confused double talk. At worst, it's out and out dishonesty.
Ft. Sumter had nothing to do with slavery. They attacked Ft. Sumter because their pride couldn't stand the idea of a Union Fort in their Territory, and not because the Fort had anything to do with Slavery.
The War Started at Ft. Sumter. Unless you can demonstrate some sort of connection between Ft. Sumter and slavery, then you ought to quit asserting that they started the war to defend slavery. It's just dishonest.
Ft. Sumter wasn't a threat to slavery. As a matter of fact, LINCOLN and the entire Freakin Union wasn't a threat to slavery.
Failure to resort to violence right off the bat was not an admission by the North that the South had a right to secede.
The Large period of inactivity can only be interpreted as a tacit "yes." Had the Union opinion been as you seemed to believe, that Secession was illegal, then they would have immediately began taking steps to counteract it.
But at no time did Lincoln or Congress recognize the Southern secession as legitimate or view them as an independent country. Neither did any other country for that matter.
Sounds like the British and the French during the Revolutionary war. And your point is?
The South was eager for war, the North was not.
No doubt some Hot heads wanted it before they knew what the consequences of it would bring. I don't think the rest really thought it through.
Oh please. Do you honestly want us to believe that Jefferson Davis was so God awfully stupid as to think he could bombard Sumter into surrender and that wouldn't lead to war? His own Secretary of State had warned him otherwise.
If Lincoln offered them slavery, the war was not ABOUT slavery.
But Lincoln didn't offer them slavery. There was an offer to protect slavery where it existed, through the Corwin Amendment passed before Lincoln was inaugurated, but not to guarantee its expansion. Since the South had guaranteed themselves unlimited slavery in their own constitution, and since they started the war to further those aims, then yes, their rebellion was an attempt to protect their institution of slavery.
And right there you admit the war had nothing to do with slavery. The war (from the Northern side) was a retaliation. Nothing else.
The war (from the Southern side) had everything to do with slavery. From the Northern side it was fighting the war that the South initiated.
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