Commentary: Truth blown away in sugarcoated 'Gone With the Wind'

Based on Margaret Mitchell's hugely popular novel, producer David O. Selznick's four-hour epic tale of the American South during slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction is the all-time box-office champion.

Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made.

Along with D.W. Griffith's technically innovative but ethically reprehensible "The Birth of a Nation" (from 1915), which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, "GWTW" presents a picture of the pre-Civil War South in which slavery is a noble institution and slaves are content with their status.

Furthermore, it puts forth an image of Reconstruction as one in which freed blacks, the occupying Union army, Southern "scalawags" and Northern "carpetbaggers" inflict great harm on the defeated South, which is saved - along with the honor of Southern womanhood - by the bravery of KKK-like vigilantes.

To his credit, Selznick did eliminate some of the most egregious racism in Mitchell's novel, including the frequent use of the N-word, and downplayed the role of the KKK, compared with "Birth of a Nation," by showing no hooded vigilantes.

One can say that "GWTW" was a product of its times, when racial segregation was still the law of the South and a common practice in the North, and shouldn't be judged by today's political and moral standards. And it's true that most historical scholarship prior to the 1950s, like the movie, also portrayed slavery as a relatively benign institution and Reconstruction as unequivocally evil.

Or as William L. Patterson of the Chicago Defender succinctly wrote: "('Gone With the Wind' is a) weapon of terror against black America."

Very true, but Lincoln darn-sure knew, or at least later found, that Seward and others, both military and civilian authorities, were overreaching. In reaction he did nothing. Being president does not mean being in total control, but it does mean being an effective manager. An effective manager trusts his subordinates to carry out his agenda. The question that requires an answer: Does Lincoln's lack of reaction to the abuses within his government and military a tacit implication of approval?

First, Lincoln did react to overabuse by Fremont by relieving him.

Second, no one claimed all of Lincoln's actions were perfect are not subject to criticism.

They are looked at on balance.

Davis's record on protecting civil rights was no better then Lincoln's.

The fact that in the midst of a bloody civil war, we were able to have most of the nation remain under civil law and not military and to have elections, says a great deal for the Consitution, its checks and balances, and Lincoln's respect for it.

Neely wrote two books: one to exonerate Lincoln of charges that he violated civil rights and the Constitution in the prosecution of the war, and the other to inculpate Davis of the same accusations.

I suppose you could call that "balanced".

Mark Neely is a member in good standing of that revisionist school that labors to heap moral burdens on the South, its People, and its leaders , splicing this historical rewriting into contemporary PC political drives to erase Southern culture, values, and memories, while vilifying Southerners as Southerners, because they're Southerners.

Stands to reason you'd bring him in here sooner or later. But we know who he is.

But why don't you just save us all some time in pawing over these middlemen, and get Kweisi Mfume and Pinchy Sulzberger in here themselves, to tell us all what lowlife scumbags we are? Save a few steps.

Legal definition of Treason Treason. A breach of allegiance to one's government, usually committed through levying war against such government or by giving aid or comfort to the enemy. The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance; or of betraying the state into the hands of a foreign power. Treason consists of two elements: adherence to the enemy, and rendering him aid and comfort. Cramer v. U. S., U.S.N.Y., 325 U.S. l, 65 S.Ct. 918, 9327 89 L.Ed. 1441. See 18 U.S.C.A. § 2381. A person can be convicted of treason only on the testimony of two witnesses, or confession in open court. Art. III, Sec. 3, U.S. Constitution.

Betrayal of ones nation is treason.

If it sounds like a duck...

By the way, are you and rest of the 'South will rise again' clique under the Constitution?

According to historian William Hanchett in his book, The Lincoln Conspiracy Murders, "While it is unlikely that Holt doubted for a moment that Davis and the others were guilty, as charged, he and Stanton were too able and experienced to fail to recognize that the evidence presented at the conspiracy trial was not proof of guilt but only hearesay and that it was only as credible as the eyewitnesses who gave it."

I suggest you read "The Conspiracy to Implicate the Confederate Leaders in Lincoln's Assassination" by Seymour J. Frank, which appeared in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March, 1954, Vol. XL, No. 4. Frank's article was reprinted by The Beauvoir Press, Box 200, W. Beach Boulevard, Biloxi Mississippi 39531 in 1987. Beauvoir was, of course, the home of Jefferson Davis and is now a museum.

Stanton was the one who made the accusation that Davis and others engineered the assassination. From the article:

In support of Stanton's accusations, Holt [a longtime political ally of Stanton] promptly presented to the Chief Executive, in oral form, the stories of Richard Montgomery and Dr. James B. Merritt, two informers in the employ of the War Office. Although these statements had neither been made under oath nor reduced to writing, Johnson, apparently convinced by this hearsay evidence, immediately issued a proclamation which "startled the whole continent" ...

A number of other witnesses were procured by Holt and Stanton through the assistance of their chief witness, Sanford Conover. Some had testified in the earlier trial of the Booth conspirators. Here are some excerpts from Frank's article again:

Conover was then called to Washington and testified on May 8, 1866. ... Campbell [one of the witnesses against Davis procured by Conover] followed him on the stand and upset the proceedings by admitting his testimony was false. Conover, he declared, had prepared the statement which he had memorized and repeated to Holt. He readily admitted that he had perjured himself and stated that he had received $500 from Holt, $100 from Conover, and an additional 300 to cover traveling expenses. Conover promptly swore that Campbell was a liar. In company with a sergeant-at-arms of the [Congressional] Committee, Conover then left for New York to secure the attendance of other witnesses he had originally procured. On his arrival in New York, it was alleged, he eluded his guard and disappeared.

Dr. Merritt was called before the Committee, where, under cross-examination by Rogers, he admitted that his testimony before the military court was also false. He confessed that Conover had secured Montgomery as well as himself as witnesses for the prosecution, and that he had received $6,000 from the war office for his services and testimony. So startling and incriminating were Merritt's disclosures that the majority of the Committee [Radical Republicans] refused to allow the attending court reporters to transcribe the notes.

Letters apparently exist between some of the witnesses against Davis that show that the "arrangement" [with Holt] had been confessed to Davis' friends. One letter alleges that Davis' friends would pay large sums for testimony on Davis' behalf.

Holt apparently decided to make Conover the scapegoat for the failed attempt to get Davis. Conover produced some letters including some from Holt and had them published in the New York Herald and other newspapers. Holt replied by publishing two tracts entitled, Vindication of Judge Advocate General Holt .... Holt never sued the Herald for liable, but claimed the letters were false and denied being a party to Conover's fraud.

Conover was arrested and tried for perjury before the Judiciary Committee about his testimony there. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.

To promote his case for getting a suspended sentence or pardon, he approached James Ashley and Benjamin Butler offering to provide evidence connecting President Johnson to the assassination of Lincoln. He didn't get his suspended sentence, thought he had been betrayed, and sent to President Johnson evidence (letters, outlines of proposed testimony) of the plottings against Johnson. Johnson promptly published them in the newspapers on August 10, 1867. Johnson granted Conover a pardon in 1869.

The Democrats still had enough votes in the Senate to block anything of that nature.

That's a red herring as there were northern Democrats from states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey who favored protection. One of the bill's main co-sponsors in the Senate was Bigler from Pennsylvania - a Democrat - and it was eventually signed by President Buchanan - another Democrat from Pennsylvania.

Below is the speech from Alexander Stephens, against secession

Quoting Stephens on the tariff act in 1860 is fallacious. He was removed from the debates of Congress at that time and did not comprehend the economics of the issue as other members of the House and Senate did.

Senator Wigfall of Texas actually rebutted Stephens' calculation claims on the floor of the chamber and in specific detail:

Tell me not that we have got the legislative department of this Government, for I say we have not. As to this body, where do we stand? Why, sir, there are now eighteen non-slaveholding States. In a few weeks we shall have the nineteenth, for Kansas will be brought in. Then arithmetic which settles our position is simple and easy. Thirty-eight northern Senators you will have upon this floor. We shall have thirty to your thirty-eight. After the 4th of March, the Senator from California, the Senator from Indiana, the Senator from New Jersey, and the Senator from Minnesota will be here. That reduces the northern phalanx to thirty-four...There are four of the northern Senators upon whom we can rely, whom we know to be friends, whom we have trusted in our days of trial heretofore, and in whom, as Constitution-loving men, we will trust. Then we stand thirty-four to thirty-four, and your Black Republican Vice President to give the casting vote. Mr. Lincoln can make his own nominations with perfect security that they will be confirmed by this body"

It should be noted that when time came to pass the Morrill Tariff, Senator Hunter of Virginia - who had delayed the bill from coming to the floor for almost a year by exerting every parliamentary tactic at his disposal - similarly remarked:

No, sir; this bill will pass. And let it pass into the statute-book; let it pass into history, that we may know how it is that the South has been dealt with when New England and Pennsylvania held the power to deal with her interests.

The South had full representation in Congress.

That is simply a lie. The Morrill Tariff passed the House with ease in May of 1860 despite virtually unanimous opposition by every southern member. As I noted, Senator Hunter exerted every bit of parliamentary strength he could to delay the vote in the Senate until after the election hoping for the slim chance that enough votes would emerge to block it. They did not and had every single southern member stayed in the Senate and voted against the Morrill Tariff, the best case scenario they could have hoped for was a tie, in which case Vice President Hamlin would cast the deciding vote in favor.

However, Jefferson Davis was a traitor by any definition of the word.

You misunderstand the crime of treason, which is to say being a traitor. A traitor is, by very definition, a person who subverts the cause of his country while simultaneously professing to be its friend and operating within its structure.

It does NOT apply to persons who have openly shed their affiliation with a country and, where the two subsequently meet, have declared their opposition and hostility to it. Such a person may be an enemy and a belligerant, but he is not a traitor as he no longer professes friendship or affiliation within the country he opposes.

It is for this reason that Benedict Arnold and John Kerry were traitors - they both conducted their subversive acts while professing friendship to the target of those acts - but George Washington and Jefferson Davis were not.

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