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 ...
THE TOWN MEETING
The town meeting in Monument Square this afternoon [April 19] drew an immense crowd. A State flag was hoisted.
Mayor Brown said he was opposed to the call of the President in spirit and object, but as Maryland was still in the Union, he had exerted himself to the utmost of his ability to protect the troops in their passage through the city. He, however, felt that this should not be, and had telegraphed to the President urging that no more troops be sent through.
Governor Hicks said that he was opposed to secession, but the right of revolution could not be disputed. It was a folly to attempt to subjugate the South, and he hoped the North and the Administration would see the impracticability of doing so. He was still devoted to the Union, and hoped to see a reconstruction of it. (Shouts of "No, never.") The Governor replied that he would bow to the decision of the people of Maryland.
And from another column in the paper:
THE MILITARY ORDERED OUT
About one o'clock the military of the city was called out. It was stated that it had been done at the request of the Governor of the State, who would forbid the passage of any more Northern troops through the city.
The Governor, Mayor and Board of Police have united in recommending the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to remove any troops now at the station out of the city and State without delay.
They are already off.
THE GOVERNOR AND MAYOR IN CONSULTATION
Upon the commencement of the difficulties occurring to-day, the Governor left his quarters at the Fountain Hotel, to consult with the Mayor of the city, and will take steps with him to restore order.
The following order has been sent to us for publication by The Sun, and as the earliest mode of presenting it to the public, we include it in the contents of The Sun Extra.
DIVISION ORDERS
First Light Division, MD Volunteers
Baltimore, 19th April, 1861
In obedience to the order of his Excellency Governor Hicks, the First Light Division will parade forthwith in North Calvert street, provided with ball(?) carteridge, to suppress the insurrection and riot going on in the streets of this city, and to preserve good order and quiet.
By order of: MAJ. GEN. STEUART
James H. Steuart, Acting Aid.
Governor Hicks Declines to Allow the Passage of Troops [their bold]
Harrisburg, April 19 -- Governor Hicks, of Maryland, has declined by telegraph to allow any more armed troops to pass through Baltimore.
The city council, at its session this morning, unanimously passed a resolution appropriating $500,000 to be used by the mayor in such manner as he may deem best to defend the city from attack and to put down insurrection.
... Colonel Lee, who was the commander of troops at Harper's ferry during the John Brown raid, has been commissioned by the Government to aid in the organizing of troops for the defense of the city.
The same bill of rights were put directly into the Confederate Constitution.
Lincoln had enemies-another new revelation!
Like I said, tinfoil hat time.
These guys wouldn't impeach Lincoln but they would assassinate him!?
Somehow part of my last message disappeared. It should have noted that the Cincinnati paper was reporting on the actions of the Baltimore City Council and that report was dated April 20.
The South could lay claim to the BOR just as much as the North could, if not more so. The difference was that the South understood them.
Gee, you think that the fact there was a little matter of a civil war resulted in Congress's deference to Lincoln and his role as commander and chief?
They did?
Well, how come the first gun control laws came from the South?
I'm not certain you've provided a #3demonstration of what you are #3talking about.
I will note, however, that military orders abound within the yankee army directing troops to conduct outright confiscation of firearms from civilians.
I didn't take it ... I swear! ;^)
I thought he was in Texas!
The former states of the Confederacy, many of which had recognized the right to carry arms openly before the Civil War, developed a very sudden willingness to qualify that right. One especially absurd example, and one that includes strong evidence of the racist intentions behind gun control laws, is Texas. http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html
Disarming a potentially hostile citizen is far different then denying the right to bear arms during peacetime and based on race.
Ofcourse, the South was a great defender of the Bill of Rights for whites
The first gun control laws were enacted in the ante-bellum South forbidding blacks, whether free or slave, to possess arms, in order to maintain blacks in their servile status. After the Civil War, the South continued to pass restrictive firearms laws in order to deprive the newly freed blacks from exercising their rights of citizenship. During the later part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, gun control laws were passed in the South in order to disarm agrarian reformers and in the North to disarm union organizers. In the North, a strong xenophobic reaction to recent waves of immigrants added further fuel for gun control laws which were used to disarm such persons. Other firearms ownership restrictions were adopted in order to repress the incipient black civil rights movement.
http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Tahmassebi1.html
About one o'clock the military of the city was called out. It was stated that it had been done at the request of the Governor of the State, who would forbid the passage of any more Northern troops through the city.
On an earlier post, I was "corrected" for referring to the militia as "military" {although I early used the term "(para)military" to cover all bases}. Do you consider the state or local militia to be a "military" unit, as per this article you posted?
I notice in the articles you have posted, the emphasis in the news reports are in regard to preventing more rioting. It does not make mention of destroying railroad bridges.
And do you happen to know of the Gen. Steuart (unique spelling) was the same one who was at Gettysburg with the Army of Northern Virginia?
James Madison to Daniel Webster
15 Mar. 1833
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy. Its double aspect, nevertheless, with the countenance recd from certain quarters, is giving it a popular currency here which may influence the approaching elections both for Congress & for the State Legislature. It has gained some advantage also, by mixing itself with the question whether the Constitution of the U.S. was formed by the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion by animated partisans.
It is fortunate when disputed theories, can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as embodied into the several states, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, by the same authority & by the same process have converted the Confederacy into a mere league or treaty; or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have embodied the people of their respective States into one people, nation or sovereignty; or as they did by a mixed form make them one people, nation, or sovereignty, for certain purposes, and not so for others.
The Constitution of the U.S. being established by a Competent authority, by that of the sovereign people of the several States who were the parties to it, it remains only to inquire what the Constitution is; and here it speaks for itself. It organizes a Government into the usual Legislative Executive & Judiciary Departments; invests it with specified powers, leaving others to the parties to the Constitution; it makes the Government like other Governments to operate directly on the people; places at its Command the needful Physical means of executing its powers; and finally proclaims its supremacy, and that of the laws made in pursuance of it, over the Constitutions & laws of the States; the powers of the Government being exercised, as in other elective & responsible Governments, under the controul of its Constituents, the people & legislatures of the States, and subject to the Revolutionary Rights of the people in extreme cases.
It might have been added, that whilst the Constitution, therefore, is admitted to be in force, its operation, in every respect must be precisely the same, whether its authority be derived from that of the people, in the one or the other of the modes, in question; the authority being equally Competent in both; and that, without an annulment of the Constitution itself its supremacy must be submitted to.
The only distinctive effect, between the two modes of forming a Constitution by the authority of the people, is that if formed by them as embodied into separate communities, as in the case of the Constitution of the U.S. a dissolution of the Constitutional Compact would replace them in the condition of separate communities, that being the Condition in which they entered into the compact; whereas if formed by the people as one community, acting as such by a numerical majority, a dissolution of the compact would reduce them to a state of nature, as so many individual persons. But whilst the Constitutional compact remains un-dissolved, it must be executed according to the forms and provisions specified in the compact. It must not be forgotten, that compact, express or implied is the vital principle of free Governments as contradistinguished from Governments not free; and that a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism.
http://www.juntosociety.com/i_documents/jm_dw.htm
In various places earlier he said that the states, being sovereign, were the ultimate judges of what is correct. He felt that South Carolina's problem with the tariff wasn't sufficient for them to secede in the 1830s. To me, that was for South Carolina to decide, not Madison.
As Madison said:
It appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in common sense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of compacts, that, where resort can be had to no tribunal, superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain made has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the states, given by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and, consequently, that, as the. parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.
He wasn't all that consistent at a young age either. Madison fluctuated between a moderate small-f federalist and a Jeffersonian free trader and nullifier over the course of just a couple years in the 1790's. He was a smart man and he had many valuable things to say, but he's simply unreliable for an unopposed authoritative opinion on many matters because for every letter to Daniel Webster that somebody else quotes I can quote the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves.
Maybe he thought the survival of the Union was important for the freedom of the individual.
Another good website with scads of historical documents is the "Avalon Project at the Yale Law School."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
Ask the author of the newspaper article. The article referred to 'military of the city'. Does that mean state militia? Does that mean the full police department?
I notice in the articles you have posted, the emphasis in the news reports are in regard to preventing more rioting. It does not make mention of destroying railroad bridges.
The April 20th paper I quoted was reporting about the affairs of April 19. At that point, the bridges had not been destroyed/disabled. I do not have a copy of the Philadelphia paper for the April 21 - May 26th period. I made copies of the paper covering the time when Merryman was arrested and Taney ruled (May 27-29), but not the interim period after the initial disturbance in Baltimore. I do have copies of other newspapers reporting about Baltimore in this period, but no articles specifically about the bridge destruction. Thanks, I'll try to remember to check on that event on my next trip to the library.
And do you happen to know of the Gen. Steuart (unique spelling) was the same one who was at Gettysburg with the Army of Northern Virginia?
Sorry, I don't know. It is an odd spelling.
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