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 ...
I think there was a law or rule passed by the Confederates that white Union officers in charge of Negro troops were to be be killed. I don't know that it was ever put into practice -- the Union may have promised sufficient retaliation that the South didn't go through with it. I've seen reference to such Union officers being held in Confederate prisons rather than killed, but I probably couldn't find that again without a great deal of looking.
As far as Fort Pillow goes, I suspect that individual Confederate soldiers or groups of them did get out of hand, but their officers restrained them as best they could. I've seen newspaper reports of a few Union wounded being buried alive but escaping after the Confederates left. These newspaper accounts appeared within a couple of days of the battle. So I don't doubt that some bad things happened.
Part of the problem was that the black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow had been mistreating, robbing, and worse the wives and families of the Tennessee troops under Forrest. The battle gave the Confederate troops a chance to retaliate. Again, I would have to search to find where I read that.
As far as the official policy, at least in late 1864, about turning captured black Union soldiers into slaves, please see the following excerpt from an October 10, 1864 letter from Lee to Grant (Source: The Memphis Daily Appeal [then being printed in Montgomery, Alabama], November 2, 1864):
I beg to explain the policy pursued by the Confederate Government towards this class of persons, when captured by its forces.
All negroes in the military or naval services of the United States, taken by us, who are not identified as the property of citizens or residents of any of the Confederate States, are regarded as prisoners of war, being held to be proper subjects of exchange, as I recently had the honor to inform you.
No labor is extracted from such prisoners by the Confederate authorities.
Negroes who owe service or labor to citizens or residents of the Confederate States, and who, through compulsion, persuasion, or of their own accord, leave their owners, and are placed in the military or naval services of the United States, occupy a different position.
The right to the service or labor of negro slaves, in the Confederate States, is the same now as when those States were members of the Federal Union.
The constitutional relations and obligations of the Confederate Government to the owners of this species of property, are the same as those so frequently and so long recognized as appertaining to the government of the United States, with reference to the same type of persons, by its organic law.
That policy of the Confederates toward former Southern slaves who were captured in Union uniforms was confirmed by Federal General Benjamin "Beast" Butler, Commissioner of Prisoner Exchange after the war, as follows:
In case the Confederate authorities should yield to the argument...and formally notify me that their slaves captured in our uniform would be exchanged as other soldiers were, and that they were ready to return to us all our prisoners at Andersonville and elsewhere in exchange for theirs, I had determined, with the consent of the lieutenant-general [Grant], as a last resort, in order to prevent exchange, to demand that the outlawry against me should be formally reversed and apologized for before I would further negotiate the exchange of prisoners.
Thanks for the information.
Still no answer to either of my questions.
IIRC some of Fielding Hurst's men were in the fort. Shortly after the battle Forrest passed a communication to the yankee command demanding that Hurst be turned over as a war criminal. The yankees said they'd investigate it or something, then refused to give him up.
the new england yankees INSIST that their view of the world is the ONLY legitimate view. (homosexual "marriage"/abortion on demand/"gun control"/tolerance for illegal substance abuse/high taxes/affirmative action/etc MUST be accepted by EVERYONE because the intellectual/social/academic LEFTIST elites out of the northeast SAY that EVERYONE must approve and PREFERABLY publicly ACCEPT their particular prejudices.)
my dear friend, the Reverend Father Alister Anderson, says that the "lust for domination of others" is a DIRECT descendant of the RADICAL-fringe Puritanism out of new england. the coercive RELIGIOUS fanaticism of Cotton Mather & others of that sort has been replaced by SECULAR HUMANIST fanaticism of an equally coercive sort.
otoh, in the southland the opinion is and always has been, "do whatever you like at your place so long as you keep it at home & out of my face". thus, you can freely practice your religion UNdisturbed, whether one may be Jewish,a Baptist, a Muslim,a Buddhist, a Roman Catholic or a "snake-handler".
FEW or NO southerners will care WHAT religion you practice as long as you HAVE one (there IS a longstanding prejudice in the southland against strident LOUDSPOKEN atheism.)
my business partner (who happens to be female,smart,educated,beautiful & Jewish) is insulted,discriminated against & reviled every time we go north on business.
such behavior rarely if ever happens in the southland. she asked me once why that was true. i told her that, "we have lots of folks down here that handle rattlesnakes, cottonmouths & copperheads in church. a lady that lights candles on Friday night & cooks without pork is just another sort of "church lady" & looks "pretty tame" by comparison!
THAT is the MAJOR difference between north & south. we want to be LEFT ALONE;the damnyankee DEMANDS that we be like them and/or that we remain UNDER THEIR BOOT.
btw, for the southerner,TWBTS was MOSTLY a war to be "left alone". i.e., the war was about personal LIBERTY.
for the damnyankee the war was NOT about slavery OR preservation of the union. it was about CONTROL & PERMANENT political/moral/social/intellectual DOMINATION of the whole country.
free dixie,sw
amen
teddy "the driver" kennedy has been there a long time TOO. he is also NUTS & EVIL, imVho.
free dixie,sw
My grandma always speculated that some of the property may have once belonged to her grandparents. I watched on TV the tour of the ranch and seen fotos on the internet. I'd love to see it first hand. I'm going to make it a point.
otoh, the damnyankees DID MURDER TENS of THOUSANDS of NON-white CSA soldiers, who were unlucky enough to become yankee POWs. (about 15,000 were intentionally MURDERED in cold blood at just ONE damnyankee concentration camp in MD. FACT!)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
just because POLAND was defeated soundly by the NAZI war machine does NOT mean that the lust for Polish LIBERTY & SELF-DETERMINATION was WRONG and/or EVIL.
the crushing of the new,relatively poor, small, sparsely populated, agricultural dixie republic by the huge damnyankee war machine is EXACTLY equivalent to what Germany did to Poland's army in 1939.
the BRAVE & HONORABLE Poles that fought the NAZI regime AND our hungry,barefooted, BRAVE & HONORABLE "boys in gray" were RIGHT, despite losing their war.
free dixie,sw
You can't read? or you don't comprehend? The answers are all there for you, from the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. The California troops anticipated contact with the confederates, but the Texans had already skedaddled back to San Antonio - abandoning their wounded and sick along the way.
That's because the level of research that you do consistently runs the gamut between zip and none at all. Jefferson Davis's Christmas present for 1862 stated the following:
Now therefore I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America and acting by their authority, appealing to the Divine Judge in attestation that their conduct is not guided by the passion of revenge but that they reluctantly yield to the solemn duty of repressing by necessary severity crimes of which their citizens are the victims, do issue this my proclamation, and by virtue of my authority as Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States do order—
1. That all commissioned officers in the command of said Benjamin F. Butler be declared not entitled to be considered as soldiers engaged in honorable warfare but as robbers and criminals deserving death, and that they and each of them be whenever captured reserved for execution.
2. That the private soldiers and non-commissioned officers in the army of said Butler be considered as only the instruments used for the commission of the crimes perpetrated by his orders and not as free agents; that they therefore be treated when capture as prisoners of war with kindness and humanity and be sent home on the usual parole that they will in no manner aid or serve the United States in any capacity during the continuance of this war unless duly exchanged.
3. That all negro slaves captured in arms be at once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective States to which they belong to be dealt with according to the laws of said States.
4. That the like orders be executed in all cases with respect to all commissioned officers of the United States when found serving in company with armed slaves in insurrection against the authorities of the different States of this Confederacy.
In testimony whereof I have signed these presents and caused the seal of the Confederate States of America to be affixed thereto at the city of Richmond on this 23d day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two.
JEFF'N DAVIS.
On April 30, 1863, the confederate congress passes a law stating that white officers of black regiments would be shot and the soldiers captured returned to slavery.
And the Southern leadership (Calhoun) was fortunate that they did not try to secede when Jackson was President (a Southerner) because he would have hung the lot of them for treason.
you show yourself to be at least ILL-educated, if NOT UN-educated about TWBTS.
you are obviously yet another victim of the self-righteous,arrogant,self-serving damnyankee-controlled "publick screwl edumakashun sistim".
your whole post has NOT even ONE truthful/honest/factual statement, except that we lost our war for independence.
btw, there were THREE (3) large, all-black CSA units, which had their own black officers in early 1861. by mid-1862 (primarily because of units being consolidated as casualities grew), virtually all CSA army units were racially/ethnically/religiously desegregated. the CSMC & CSN were ALWAYS desegregated.
to quote Professor Arnold Toynbee, late of Oxford University, " by nothing more than accident & necessity, the Confederate States military forces became the world's first, large, modern racially & religiously desegregated armed force".
free dixie,sw
What did you think about the "Los Angeles Mounted Rifles"?
I have posted articles that refute that nonsense.
So, if might doesn't make right why was the South defending slavery?
Why did they go all the way up North to drag back escaped slaves, who only wanted their freedom?
The South was wrong-period.
that the WAR CRIMINAL MG Ben (THE BEAST) Butler's coven of WAR CRIMINALS, RAPISTS & ARMED ROBBERS were to be treated as CRIMINALS??? (such treatment of CRIMINALS is not/was not different than the treatment afforded WAR CRIMINALS in virtually every other conflict.)
btw,can you give an ORIGIONAL SOURCE for this letter???
btw, N-S, smart people on FR are "on to your game". you are NOT believed, absent INDEPENDENT PROOF, as everyone has figured out that what you post is only PROPAGANDA.
free dixie,sw
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