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 ...
But as the Supreme Court said in the Prize Cases, war presented itself and the President had an obligation to respond. And I'll add, respond with everything in his arsenal (military and legal).
That presumes that you have the correct answer, which you demonstrably do not per your previous erronious claims on this forum about the same subject.
You were the one who said that Lincoln should have read the Constitution before sending the supply ships. What connection were you trying to make?
At the time,everyone, I repeat, everyone knew that sending Federal troops to Charleston was an act of war.
As he made it clear, his intentions were to land supplies and reinforce only if the resupply effort was opposed.
If there were a real concern that the troops be re-supplied, all Lincoln had to do was authorize the Union quartermaster at Ft. Sumter to order and accept supplies from the Charleston authorities. He had money on deposit for such requests, and this is the way the men had been fed since construction had begun 25 years before.
Authorize to what end? On April 2, the Davis regime had ordered Beauregard to cease extending any and all courtesies to Major Anderson, including the purchase of provisions from the city. Anderson couldn't have provisioned from the city even if he wanted to.
If Lincoln did not trust that transaction, then he could have shipped the supplies down by railroad.
And get them to the fort how? The Davis regime had cut off all contact with the shore. The only way left was by sea.
What constitutional authority did he have for this provocative and aggressive action?
In his position as commander in chief of the Army and the Navy.
You need to lighten up a little bit.
Try a purgative.
The American Colonization Society?
Now there is an image one doesn't run across every day. Most normal people would agree that the "repugnance" stems from the John Wilkes Booth worship that apparently goes on among your crowd. And you have the gall to call me "wicked."
"Get thee hence, devil!"
Acting under the President's orders and authority. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1863 provided the missing Congressional guidance on the matter; but until it was passed, there was no controlling legislation. Lincoln acted in an unprecedented situation - good thing he did too, or we might all talk with a drawl.
"No, meathead. Merryman carried out orders from the Governor of Maryland, as part of a Maryland military unit."
The orders to burn the bridge came from the Mayor and Chief of Police of Baltimore. What gave them that authority? Your "I was just following orders" defense didn't work too well at Nuremberg, either.
"Suspending the privilege of the writ in the described circumstances has been judicially determined to be UNCONSTITUTIONAL."
Sorry, you are wrong again. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1863 was constitutional. Retrospective legislation is permissible as long as it does not run afoul of ex post facto prohibitions.
Given your penchant for hysteria and nonsense, I am not surprised you actually believe that Booth was the dupe of the "Radicals."
The fact that they were the Mayor and Police Chief of Baltimore, and thus the government officials responsible for controlling the city's bridges and roadways to prevent rioting.
<klaxons screaming in background>
Please notify NORAD, we have multiple tracks on Inbound Clintonoid Ballistic Meadowmuffins.......
<klaxons joined by enormous amplified voice commanding blast doors to be closed>
Oh, please. Be good enough to cite and quote the poster who is "worshipping" John Wilkes Booth.
Notwithstanding that his criminally misguided intercession spared Abraham Lincoln's reputation and the lives of millions of American blacks, plus incalculable numbers of their progeny.
It's fifty-fifty Lincoln's next four years would have become a reign of terror for somebody, because he was a Rational personality type accustomed a) to having his way with everyone and b) to having large numbers of the unreconciled killed by his enormous and essentially uncontrolled (by anyone but him) armies.
In twisting the meaning of my post, you prudently avoided quoting me, since the import of my statement would be instantaneously clear to any fair-minded reader, and undermine your fetid little attempt to populate my statement with your own intention.
I posted, and I quote in relevant part,
I am the product of oil-patch society. Former President Bush once ran Zapata Corp., back in the day, with Hugh Liedtke. Obviously I know President Bush -- hell, I just got my hair cut Saturday in a barbershop where Bush's picture hangs on the wall, from when he got his hair cut there eight or nine years ago. We live about two miles apart. We obviously know each other.
Now my tongue becomes obvious, planted as it is in my cheek, as I make fun of your tendentious "Taney was a friend of Merryman and should have recused himself" drivel.
Yes.
Wow, it is tinfoil hat time!
No, he didn't. He conspicuously refused to consult the Congress on the State of the Union, or to seek the advice and consent of the Senate.
There was no matter before him so pressing as to prevent his involving the Congress in a constitutional response to the Sumter crisis -- which he was provoking, by the way.
Lincoln's solution for everything was war -- and he didn't want Congress around. Other posters have demonstrated, from his own meeting minutes, his continuing allergy to Congressional action. He wanted Congress out of session and preferably out of town while he "handled things" in a manner absolutely inconsistent with the Constitution, inconsistent to a degree that required indemnification later -- "high crimes and misdemeanors", unless Lyman Trumbull could hornswoggle the Indemnification Bill through a sleeping Senate chamber in the dead of night.
Bleah. That's like saying my driving 100 mph in a drunken stupor is permissible, as long as it doesn't fall afoul of Officer Speed.
Quite a round-robin we've got going here. Someone should put up a maypole.
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