Posted on 11/13/2004 11:12:00 AM PST by 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacticket.com ...
Is Noel Coward posting here now?
Excellant, thank you very much.
Unfortunately none of the Founders' generation will support the Idea since most had thought of themselves as Americans since the early 1770s. Not even Jefferson supported the concept of secession as anything but evil.
Madison merely made the best of the understanding reached that amendments be added and prevented any damage.
I suppose when a papal state and an insignificant duchy are all you've got, they take on a great deal of importance! LOL
You do recall that the Germans didn't want the English rulers to have any claim on the duchy?
"If St. Eustasius is good enough for the United States in 1776, Saxe Coburg Gotha was good enough for the Confederate States in 1862."
By the way, who was the Ambassador sent by SCG to the CSA?
As I noted previously, if the tiny island of St. Eustasius was good enough for the USA, Saxe Coburg Gotha more than sufficed for the CSA.
The issue remains, however, about your attempt to belittle Prince Albert's connection to Saxe Coburg Gotha as does your chronic and habitual penchant for dishonesty as exhibited most recently through it.
By the way, who was the Ambassador sent by SCG to the CSA?
Not having a copy of the diplomatic documents they exchanged, which would presumably tell that information, I would direct you to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond where IIRC they reside. I can tell you some of the names in the case of the Vatican.
The original CSA diplomat to arrive there was Dudley Mann - one of the confederate negotiators in Europe. He was received by Cardinal Antonelli, the vatican Secretary of State, and given both diplomatic protection and an audience with Pius. The arrangement of subsequent diplomacy is a bit unusual as it involves a figure who was given papers permitting him to conduct diplomacy by Jefferson Davis at a time he was simultaneously a Bishop within the Catholic Church itself - Bishop Lynch of Charleston. He travelled to Rome to fulfill these duties in 1864 and remained until after the war. Unfortunately his papers do not seem to be readily accessible and, unlike Mann's, are not in the official records series. If I were to speculate on their location I would guess that they reside in the Vatican itself, seeing as Lynch did not return to the United States until well after the war.
A cannon salute from some Dutch dependency did not make the United States a nation. It's a quaint story, however.
"The issue remains, however, about your attempt to belittle Prince Albert's connection to Saxe Coburg Gotha as does your chronic and habitual penchant for dishonesty as exhibited most recently through it."
What is troubling is your chronic and habitual penchant for fantasy. Saxe-Coburg Gotha was an insignificant duchy. Albert, as a second son under the rule of primogeniture, got while the getting was good.
"The original CSA diplomat to arrive there was Dudley Mann"
A review of Mann's rosy letters suggest that he was as deluded as you are. Case in point; an excerpt from his letter No. 68, dated November 11, 1863:
"Of course I can form no conjecture when the letter of his holiness to the President will be ready for delivery. Weeks, perhaps months, may elapse first. With my explanations to him upon the subject of slavery, I indulge the hope that he will not allude, hurtfully to us, to the subject. As soon as I receive it I will endeavor to prevail with him to have the correspondence published in the official Journal here, or to give me permission to bring it out in the Paris Moniteur. Its information would be powerful upon all the Catholic governments in both hemispheres, and I would return to Brussels and make an appeal to King Leopold to exert himself with Great Britain, Prussia, etc., in our behalf. Thus I am exceedingly hopeful that before spring our independence will be generally acknowledged. Russia alone will most probably stand aloof until we are recognized by the North, as she has now, at least ostensibly, identified her fortunes with that distracted and demon-like division of the old Union."
This guy was a crack up.
How, then, did General Cadwalader know about the President's direction on the matter? It was either conveyed to him verbally or in writing - since it was not apparently broadcast through the newspapers. He didn't just make it up.
"The Official Record proves beyond a doubt and to a moral certainty that GENERAL CADWALLADER had not been authorized to suspend habeas corpus prior to May 28, 1861."
The lack of documentation in the record does not prove than none had existed, or that the authorization had not been made. It is a nice story, though.
"As Chief Justice Taney patiently explained to the Great Usurper:
A military officer has no right to arrest and detain a person not subject to the rules and articles of war, for an offense against the laws of the United States, except in aid of the judicial authority, and subject to its control; and if the party be arrested by the military, it is the duty of the officer to deliver him over immediately to the civil authority, to be dealt with according to law."
Here Taney was factually mistaken. Merryman was an officer of a Maryland Militia unit engaged in sabotage.
"Then by now you should know that such authority could only be delegated to 'the officer in command at the point where resisistance occurs.'"
I believe the term is "the chain of custody." Lincoln seemed not to have a problem with Cadwalader's actions. The idea of suspending the privilege of the writ was so partisan judges like Taney could not spring their treasonable friends.
"As usual, you INVENT your NON-FACTS. What General Cadwallader had his aide read to Chief Justice Taney is a matter of official record and is not in dispute, except by the capitan_kerryfugio attempt to revise it."
You are quibbling about semantics. Cadwalader's message to Taney was clear enough to Taney. Taney knew exactly what Cadwalader meant, even if you don't.
"And, as one can readily observe, after the megalomaniacal fuhrer had delegated the authority to suspend habeas to his chief storm trooper, that officer delegated the authority to Brigadier-General Beast Butler, Major-General Patterson, and Colonel Mansfield. Major-General Patterson is identified as commanding the Department of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, not General Keim and not General Cadwalader."
Now that you have descended into delusional babble, I don't think any more of your post is worth a reply.
Rhetorical speech. So what?
I take it then that you date American nationhood to sometime after November 1776 and thus necessarily after July 4, 1776 as well.
It's a quaint story, however.
It's a very interesting and significant story to our nation's history. It set the stage for St. Eustasius providing a pivotal role as a channeling point for transfering European armaments to Washington's army. It is also the subject of Barbara Tuchman's book "The First Salute."
What is troubling is your chronic and habitual penchant for fantasy. Saxe-Coburg Gotha was an insignificant duchy.
It is no fantasy to note the very real fact of diplomatic recognition, capitan. You simply don't like that fact, thus you expend your energies belittling Saxe Coburg Gotha and its most famous offspring.
A review of Mann's rosy letters suggest that he was as deluded as you are.
Once again you supplant an effort to discuss material facts of history with unnecessary personal invective and venom. You and your apprentice ftD have much in common in that respect.
Borrowing that projector again, eh capitan?
It is even more amusing to prove it over and over like a cat playing with a RAT.
The point stands. If you assert all your lies were really mistakes, then you are so mistake prone you have no credibility.
[nc] "A million bucks, coward. If you need to do something to get the money, get off the government teat."
[capitan_kerryfugio] This, coming from someone who claims to have spent 20 years in the service? If that truly was the case, then you're still a suckling.
So, capitan_refugio thinks serving in the military is sucking on the government teat. No wonder you are so proud of avoiding the draft.
[capitan_kerryfugio] I would be surprised if a cracker like you had that sort of net worth.
I would be surprised if anything in your profile is real. Just how many hispanics in southern California speak German but not Spanish? I would not be surprised if you were associated with the Claremont Institute.
[capitan_kerryfugio] You're going to have to be realistic.
I am not going to have to be anything for a whiny little LIAR such as you.
You LIE, I continue to document it, and you can just live with it, leave, or clean up your act.
[capitan_kerryfugio] Let's establish the other terms, and then we can work on the the amount I'm going to take you for.
As you are an untrustworthy LIAR, and your miserable pathetic attempt to whine your way out of all your LIES is laughable, I will continue to just sit here an laugh at you along with the rest of the chorus.
The only terms you get are unconditional surrender: STOP LYING.
Of course, they decided that 12 of the states could meet in convention and decide that 9 of the states could form a new government and go their own way, leaving the rest behind. In the end, 11 states formed a new government, leaving NC and RI on the outside looking in.
That said, it would certainly appear that the article in question -- from your quotation of it -- has prejudged Merryman on political grounds, and based its opinion of Taney's action on what The New York Times thinks would be a better outcome (Merryman stays in prison, evidently on any pretext, evidently without any sort of relief regardless of its legality). Of course, Taney couldn't base his actions on lifting the blindfold of justice to say -- "oh, I'm sorry, I had mistaken you for an honest person", and then throwing him back in prison for 99 years.
As someone else had suggested, if Lincoln thought there was a problem with people opposed to his war politically being allowed to run around free as if they were real people, he should have called the Congress back into session to deal with his "emergency" war measures on that basis.
He obviously didn't want Congress involved, because he apparently didn't take up the subject of suspending the writ with Congress for nearly two years -- or is that incorrect?
Considering that you aren't either, and considering the acute degree to which you've embarrassed yourself here with repeated lies and fabrications, I suggest you drop the crappy attitude.
When it started moving troops into the Middle East in 1990, USG commandeered airliners under a public law that allowed them to do so.
Eminent domain is another example, and the creation of National Monuments and designating areas as wetlands subject to DOI regulation is another.
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