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

sacbee ^ | 11-13-04

[LouAvul]

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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.

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

It's also a lie.

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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.

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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.

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

[fortheDeclaration]

The Souths own vice President did not know the political situation of the Congress?

LOL!

[fortheDeclaration]

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.

Amazing how you guys just make things up as you go along.

Arnold would have been a traitor had he just deserted to the enemy and began fighting against the U.S.

[GOPcapitalist]

The Souths own vice President did not know the political situation of the Congress?

In 1860 when he was actively campaigning against secession (Stephens and Lincoln who had served as Whigs in the House together were even secretly corresponding with each other in the 1860-61 winter), no. He did not know the political situation in Congress. He had been out of the House for over a year at that point and was far removed from the political operations.

I'll similarly make note of the fact that you did not bother to respond to anything else that I said about the Morrill Tariff. May I take that as a concession of your error?

[GOPcapitalist]

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.

Actually, that's a generic definition of the term but it will still do. Let's consider: 1. "A breach of allegiance to one's government,"

Did Davis breach his allegiance to the United States government, which also using a legal definition would entail a violation of some duty on his part at a time when his allegiance was in binding existence? No. He did not. In fact he very publicly ended his allegiance in a Senate speech and went his separate way from the previous government before engaging in any operation of the war.

2. "usually committed through levying war against such government or by giving aid or comfort to the enemy."

Did Davis levy war? Well, yes he did. But he did so as a belligerant power (the confederate government) against another belligerant power (the union government) under the laws of war, not of treason. If one were to extend the definition of treason to include ANY act of war against the United States - a proposition that would be necessary for your assertion to stick - by a similar token Japan would be guilty of treason against us in 1941, Germany in 1918, Spain in 1898, Britain in 1812 and so forth, rather than being belligerant powers.

3. "The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance"

Did Davis attempt to overthrow the government of the United States? No. He did not, nor did he owe any further allegiance to that government, having publicly ended it some months prior. The confederacy sought but one thing - it's independence - and no more wanted to gain control over the northern states than the colonies wanted to control London in 1776.

4. "or of betraying the state into the hands of a foreign power."

Did Davis betray the United States into the hands of a foreign power? No. He did not, thus no treason occurred.

[fortheDeclaration]

The Souths own vice President did not know the political situation of the Congress? In 1860 when he was actively campaigning against secession (Stephens and Lincoln who had served as Whigs in the House together were even secretly corresponding with each other in the 1860-61 winter), no. He did not know the political situation in Congress. He had been out of the House for over a year at that point and was far removed from the political operations.

He seemed to me to have a pretty good grasp of the situation, naming names as being pro-South.

I'll similarly make note of the fact that you did not bother to respond to anything else that I said about the Morrill Tariff. May I take that as a concession of your error?

The Morrill Tarriff had nothing to do with the reason the South attempted to leave the Union.

Tarriff's are often the product of various groups that cross party lines.

[fortheDeclaration]

The Civil War Wartime Tariff Legislation Justin Morrill, Representative from Vermont, gained approval for a sharply increased tariff measure on March 2, 1861, two days before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. Little opposition had been raised against the proposal, given that seven Southern states had seceded. The South had vainly, and probably accurately, argued that they paid a major portion of the tariff burden, but the revenue generated from the duties was spent overwhelmingly in the North

[fortheDeclaration]

He did not. In fact he very publicly ended his allegiance in a Senate speech and went his separate way from the previous government before engaging in any operation of the war

And that is meaningless.

If Arnold had resigned his commission before he went to the British he would still be a traitor.

Stop double-talking.

The treason may have been legimate, but it is still treason.

[Polybius]

When criticized about some of the historical details of the Little House books, the author, Laura Inglis Wilder, said she didn't know she was writing history. She thought she was just writing stories. I dare say Margaret Mitchell would say the same...

That reminds me of a story I heard about a World War II veteran that was giving a talk at a University history class about his wartime experiences. The class know-it-all kept correcting him about minor historical details.

Finally, the veteran said, "You'll have to excuse me, son. I only fought in World War II. I never majored in it." :-)

[GOPcapitalist]

He seemed to me to have a pretty good grasp of the situation, naming names as being pro-South.

He named names that were leaving. To take Stephens as an authority on the 1860 Congress over incumbent participants such as Hunter, Toombs, and Wigfall would be akin to citing Bob Dole's opinion of a bill before the Senate today over Bill Frist.

The Morrill Tarriff had nothing to do with the reason the South attempted to leave the Union.

The address adopted by the South Carolina Secession Convention:

And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue— to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.

and the Georgia Secession Convention's Declaration of Causes:

The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country.

...both say otherwise. To deny that Morrill Tariff played a major role in instigating secession is to deny history.

Tarriff's are often the product of various groups that cross party lines.

In the case of 1860 the lines were firmly defined on a north-south basis with the north supporting the tariff and the south opposing it.

[GOPcapitalist]

The Civil War Wartime Tariff Legislation Justin Morrill, Representative from Vermont, gained approval for a sharply increased tariff measure on March 2, 1861, two days before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. Little opposition had been raised against the proposal, given that seven Southern states had seceded.

You are simply wrong about that. The Morrill Tariff was passed by the House in May of the previous year and was heading to passage in the Senate. Senator Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia subsequently mustered every ounce of parliamentary procedure he could to delay the Senate vote until after the election on the slim chance that they could gather the votes to defeat it. But as Wigfall noted and Hunter later recognized when the winter session opened, the new incoming Senators (who would take office in March) with the soon-to-be added GOP members from Kansas would be even worse than the existing one. There best case scenario was to force a tie, in which case they'd lose anyway because of Hamlin. Hunter and the southerners spent most of December and January trying to delay the Morrill Bill to no avail. Hunter openly admitted that its passage was becoming inevitable even though he fought it on the floor to the bitter end.

The other members realized the situation as well and in late December several of the southern members drafted a letter back to their home states urging them to follow South Carolina's course.

[GOPcapitalist]

And that is meaningless.

Yawn. Writes the abolitionist Lysander Spooner:

To determine, then, what is treason in fact, we are not to look to the codes of Kings, and Czars, and Kaisers, who maintain their power by force and fraud; who contemptuously call mankind their "subjects;" who claim to have a special license from heaven to rule on earth; who teach that it is a religious duty of mankind to obey them; who bribe a servile and corrupt priest-hood to impress these ideas upon the ignorant and superstitious; who spurn the idea that their authority is derived from, or dependent at all upon, the consent of their people; and who attempt to defame, by the false epithet of traitors, all who assert their own rights, and the rights of their fellow men, against such usurpations.

Instead of regarding this false and calumnious meaning of the word treason, we are to look at its true and legitimate meaning in our mother tongue; at its use in common life; and at what would necessarily be its true meaning in any other contracts, or articles of association, which men might voluntarily enter into with each other.

The true and legitimate meaning of the word treason, then, necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith. Without these, there can be no treason. A traitor is a betrayer --- one who practices injury, while professing friendship. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, solely because, while professing friendship for the American cause, he attempted to injure it. An open enemy, however criminal in other respects, is no traitor.

Neither does a man, who has once been my friend, become a traitor by becoming an enemy, if before doing me an injury, he gives me fair warning that he has become an enemy; and if he makes no unfair use of any advantage which my confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in his power.

For example, our fathers --- even if we were to admit them to have been wrong in other respects --- certainly were not traitors in fact, after the fourth of July, 1776; since on that day they gave notice to the King of Great Britain that they repudiated his authority, and should wage war against him. And they made no unfair use of any advantages which his confidence had previously placed in their power.

It cannot be denied that, in the late war, the Southern people proved themselves to be open and avowed enemies, and not treacherous friends. It cannot be denied that they gave us fair warning that they would no longer be our political associates, but would, if need were, fight for a separation. It cannot be alleged that they made any unfair use of advantages which our confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in their power. Therefore they were not traitors in fact: and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution.

Furthermore, men are not traitors in fact, who take up arms against the government, without having disavowed allegiance to it, provided they do it, either to resist the usurpations of the government, or to resist what they sincerely believe to be such usurpations.

It is a maxim of law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent. And this maxim is as applicable to treason as to any other crime. For example, our fathers were not traitors in fact, for resisting the British Crown, before the fourth of July, 1776 --- that is, before they had thrown off allegiance to him --- provided they honestly believed that they were simply defending their rights against his usurpations. Even if they were mistaken in their law, that mistake, if an innocent one, could not make them traitors in fact.

For the same reason, the Southern people, if they sincerely believed --- as it has been extensively, if not generally, conceded, at the North, that they did --- in the so-called constitutional theory of "State Rights," did not become traitors in fact, by acting upon it; and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution.

Spooner was a lawyer who knew what he was talking about. You are not and do not.

[lentulusgracchus]

Actually, I thought Neely was critical of Lincoln.

Kinda tells us where you are on the spectrum of Rushmore knee-benders.

[lentulusgracchus]

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

Glad you recognize that there are proper limits to abuse beyond which one ought not to go. I gather that laying Atlanta in ashes lay within them, and shooting or raping the occasional Georgian and Carolinian out-of-hand, and carrying off her table setting. It's so hard to strap on a whole State, without falling into overabuse -- I really think Sherman deserved the thanks of Republican politicians and Unionists everywhere, for "keeping it clean".

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

I might believe that if someone other than Mark Neely and the Wlat Brigade were telling me.

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.

Yeah, I'm sure that was deeply appreciated throughout the South.

[lentulusgracchus]

Read the definition of treason in the Constitution: Article III, Section 3.

Davis had to be a citizen of the United States in order to commit treason. He publicly gave up his citizenship in the United States and became an official of another country. The uses of war prevail here, not your mewling bloodthirstiness.

For some people, moonwalking and end-zone dances just aren't enough, are they?

[lentulusgracchus]

Here is the typical legalistic mindset, if a man is not convicted he is not guilty.

If you're going to hang someone, I kinda insist on it.

Go on, prove that Jefferson Davis was a traitor. I've set it out that he wasn't one, and the reason why. Now prove me wrong.

[lentulusgracchus]

Yes, it gets kinda rough in here.

Some people like to post fabrications and witting lies, and then pretend they didn't get caught when they're pantsed about it. They wait a while and then post it all over again, never mind that it's been proved waaaay beyond "lead-pipe cinches", that they lied on purpose.

Then other people like to come in and use the word "treason" a lot and talk about hanging people -- which Lincoln didn't -- and it can all get pretty strenuous. The rule about kitchens applies here.

[lentulusgracchus]

Davis also suspended the writ.

With permission from his Congress, as noted above, but then you knew that before you put up, didn't you?

Got some more quotes from Lincoln-defender and Davis-basher Mark Neely that you'd like to put up?

[lentulusgracchus]

Frankly I know little about the Southern leadership role in the murder of Lincoln. However, Jefferson Davis was a traitor by any definition of the word.

I nominate you to be the first chairman and general secretary of the Wlat Brigade, hereinafter to be known as the Sanford Conover Memorial Trooth Squad. Your motto will be: "Everything for Lincoln! Death to Traitors!"

You will be permitted, by the rules of the Trooth Squad/Wlat Brigade, to lie, fabricate, alter, forge, misquote, distort, misattribute and decontextualize any sort of material or matter ("matter" loosely construed) in the pursuit of the vindication of Abraham Lincoln's messiahood, for the embellishment of his name and record, and the vilification, criminalization, and execution of his enemies, detractors, and unbelievers.

Is there another nomination for chairman and general secretary?

Happy necktie parties, from all of us unbelievers here on FreeRepublic.

[lentulusgracchus]

Probably the greatest misrepresentation that GWTW has perpetrated over the years is the idea that all of the whites lived lives of luxury off the backs of the blacks. That is certainly true in some respects, but there were many, many other families who worked very hard to keep their farms and plantations productive and their workers well fed and healthy.

Tour the plantations of the South sometime and look at the records. This was not an easy life for anybody, and a lot of them went broke trying it. Plantation owners were supporting huge households in good times and in bad.

Look at Thomas Jefferson's records, or George Washington's, for example. Most of their slaves had been inherited and could not be freed because there was a huge debt that went along with the inheritance.

It is like a farmer borrowing money for crop seed today. He has to repay the bank, whether the crop comes in, or not. George and Tom had to repay the debts incurred by their wealthy fathers-in-law when they originally purchased the slaves, whether they wanted to, or not; and they couldn't rid themselves of the collateral, either. After all, when you purchase a car -- you have to repay the loan, even if you wreck the car and render it undrivable.

A post worth re-reading, and quoting.

Thanks.

[lentulusgracchus]

Your #162, the post that started this little party:

The "bug-eyed secessionists" to which I referred were represented by the fire-eaters (a term they, themselves, preferred). Today, that group is largely represented at FR by various droolers, cretins, and auto-eroticists. There are some who can discuss the ideas in a reasonable manner, eschewing the racist dynamic, but they are few and far between. Do not make the mistake of equating secessionists with southerners; as most southerners long ago renounced the racist secessionist political philosophy. Those at FR who embrace the racist secessionist philosophy are found all over the country; sadly, there are even a few Texans.

So, do you stand by it?