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 ...
Tell that to the nations we beat in two World Wars, they would be very suprised to learn that the United States hadn't defeated them.
So which flag do you salute, the stars and stripes or stars and bars?
Read the Constitution. It defines treason. The South Carolinians were no longer U.S. citizens and said so, having voluntarily abrogated their U.S. citizenship en masse and taken their State out of the Union.
Therefore, no treason was possible. But we were going over all this while you were off doing something else.
Oh, I was planning to!
The United States hasn't existed since 1865. We live now under an oligarchic tyranny of industrialists' money. They use the Constitution like you use a roll of Charmins.
You know it's true. The flag's the same, but the country is run by an Old World regime now. The People are no longer in charge and haven't been. They've been handled.
Great. You'll be on the couch tonight.
No, because while my wife is very proud of her southern heritage, she is more proud of being an American.
As for the couch, are you kidding, we are talking about a Southern woman here!
I know that this is the greatest nation in history.
And I know it is because we have the Declaration of Independence as our core document.
Sorry to hear that you hate your country so much.
Just correcting your lack of grasp of the concept, of what it meant to be a Southerner in the 19th century.
To get a feel for what it might have been like, jump in your car, drive to New York City, park it somewhere on 130th Street, and then lie down on the hood with $10 bills hanging out of your pockets and go to sleep.
When the slaves rose in Haiti, they killed every living thing that was white. Capiche?
LOL
Becky
The Roman Empire was great. Genghis Khan's empire was great. Neither were free republics.
And I know it is because we have the Declaration of Independence as our core document.
The Declaration of Independence and five dollars will get you a cruller at Starbucks. Nuisance fee, for having to listen to you.
Sorry to hear that you hate your country so much.
You may not infer that. Take down your invidious and untrue statement. And then bite me.
What are you suggesting here? Something out of Tennessee Williams?
STEL.....LAAAAAAA!
Like that?
RotfLM@O! How many slaves were in the territories after decades of being available for expansion? The US Supreme Court had already ruled 7-2 that Southern states had eqaul rights to the territories. If all the South wanted was to expand slavery, the union they were already members of supported and allowed slavery - so why leave? Lincoln supported slavery being permanent - so why leave is slavery was the issue? Check your history - several states seceded AFTER Lincoln invaded South Carolina - they refused to be members of a despotic union ruled by a tyrant.
SOURCE: Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, 1866, vol 2, p. 268
The District of Columbia had been governed mainly by the laws of the States which ceded it; and those laws were framed in the interest of slave-holding. They presumed every colored person a slave who could not produce White evidence of his freedom; and there had grown up in Washington a practice, highly lucrative to her Federal Marshal, but most disgraceful to the city and Nation, of seizing Blacks on the streets, immuring them in the jail, advertising them, and waiting for masters to appear, prove property, pay charges, and take the human chattels away. Mr. Lincoln's Marshal, Col. Ward H. Lamon, came with him from Illinois, but was a Virginian by birth, and did not revolt at the abundant and profitable custom brought to his shop by the practice just depicted.
Gen. Wilson, of Mass., early called the attention of the Senate to this painful subject; saying that he had "visited the jail; and such a scene of degradation and inhumanity he had never witnessed. There were persons almost entirely naked; some of them without a shirt. Some of those persons were free; most of them had run away from disloyal masters, or had been sent there by disloyal persons, for safe keeping until the war is over." He thereupon proposed a discharge by joint resolve of all persons confined in the District jail as fugitive slaves. In the debate which ensued, Mr. Wilson stated that the French legation had recently taken to that jail gentlemen who had traversed the world inspecting prisons, with a view to their improvement; and that, after examining this, they observed to the jailer that they had never before seen but one so bad; and that was in Austria. Mr. Grimes, of Iowa, remarked that he believed there was never a jail so bad as this, save the French Bastile, and some of the dungeons of Venice. When he visited it, a few days before, he found among the prisoners a boy who claimed to be free-born, yet who had been confined there thirteen months and four days on suspicion of being a runaway slave. He further stated that Marshal Lamon had forbidden Members of Congress access to the prison without his written permission.
On June 5th, 1862, General T. Williams issued the following Order:
"HEADQUARTERS SECOND BRIGADE,
"BATON ROUGE, June 5, 1862.
"[General Orders No. 46.]
"In consequence of the demoralizing and disorganizing tendencies to the troops, of harboring runaway Negroes, it is hereby ordered that the respective Commanders of the camps and garrisons of the several regiments, Second Brigade, turn all such Fugitives in their camps or garrisons out beyond the limits of their respective guards and sentinels.
"By order of Brigadier-General T. Williams:
"WICKHAM HOFFMAN,
"Assistant-Adjutant General."
See Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol 2, 1866, p. 246.
One can only hope ...
... that they understand the validity of that analogy.
Bravo Sierra. Despite their ratifications AGREEING with the practice - sanctimonious yankees were intent on forcing their new-found morals on the rest of the states. First the yankees got their money - then they got morals.
[ftD #579] I have posted articles that refute that nonsense.
I posted the record of enrollment of free blacks in Virginia into the Confederate service.
I posted the cover of Harper's showing black armed Confederate pickets.
There are at the present moment many Colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but real soldiers, having musket on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down any loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the rebels.
-- Frederick Douglass
Tennessee government passed the very first petition that legislated the use of free black soldiers. Tennessee Governor Isham Harris stated that any Southerner, black or white, between 15 and 50 joined military service was to be paid $18.00 a month and received the same clothes and rations. Four months later, two black regiments (mostly engineers) along white confederate soldiers, marched through the streets of Memphis.
The New Bern Weekly Press criticized that Black Confederates, "jeered at and insulted Northern troops, heave readily enlisted in the rebel army and at First Manassas, shot down Union soldiers with as much alacrity as if abolitionism had never existed."
But let us take a moment and examine the logic, so-called, of the author you cite as a refutation.
From your #474:
Did "free blacks" and slaves serve voluntarily as soldiers with the Confederate Forces during the American Civil War? This is a subject that has been brought up from time to time by some American Civil War historians, namely ones who espouse the Confederate cause. The short answer is that the Confederate Forces barred the enlistment of blacks, slave or free, from serving as soldiers. Logic should prevail when this question is brought up.
Let us follow this logic, so-called. The logic insists that as enlistment of blacks was barred by law, it could not have happened.
Very well. We can finally put to rest the controversy about O.J. Simpson. He was barred by law from murdering Nicole. It could not have happened. Ditto for Scott Peterson.
But why stop there? Let us empty the prisons and jails. Every inmate, regardless of what they were charged with or convicted of, we know such conduct was barred by law and therefore it logically could not have happened. We not only have reasonable doubt, we have logical proof.
Next time a cop stops you for speeding, just tell him he must be mistaken, speeding is barred by law and that proves you were not speeding and refutes any allegation that he may bring, including documentary evidence, videotape, radar result, and anything else.
Volume 9, Issue 1: ThemaTrue Defiance
Douglas Wilson
For the relativist, obviously, no absolute truth can exist anywhere. Consistency in this view is hard to come by; it always needs working up to gradually, and even then it falls short. A relativistic rebellion can never occur all at once, but rather begins where the sinful heart of man chafes most readily under the government of absolutes--sexual ethics, dogmatic theology, etc. At the beginning, relativists like to pretend that when "this one point" is challenged, the rest of the universe will not fly off in all directions. So after the first stages of the coup, any standing residuum of the old moral order is not taken as remaining evidence of absolute truth, but rather just plain furniture, for which no account need be given. Thus it is assumed two and two will continue to equal four even though no absolute law can ever constrain one's lusts.
But ideas have destinations, along with their consequences. Relativism is a leaven that cannot be limited to immoral sexual activity or a rejection of the creeds. Eventually any claim to objective truth, whether in arithmetic or science or history, must be rejected also. No truth claim may be accepted other than the one which rejects truth claims. Our current obsession with multiculturalism is a prime example of this. This obsession is not an educated desire to "modify the emphasis," gently reminding us that the Chinese had a great civilization while our Anglo ancestors were still killing their meat with rocks. If the desire of the multiculturalists was simply a well-taken insistence that white people are not the only people in history who ever did anything, there would be no argument. But modern "multi-culturalism" is relativistic and, thus, is not an attack on "white history." It is an attack on the very idea of objective history itself.
As a result, multiculturalism delivers a two-fold insult to American blacks. In the first place they are saddled with a mandatory pride in bogus realities. Advocacy history in its "Afrocentrist" guise says that blacks taught Socrates everything he knew, blacks built the pyramids, etc. Thinking blacks are embarrassed by the whole farce. "Kwandi Kweebe invented the light bulb. Yeah, right." The second insult, worse because it has been far more successful as a slander, consists of withholding from blacks an important part of their genuine heritage, one in which they can and should take deep satisfaction and pride.
The Confederate States of America lasted as long as it did, against overwhelming odds, because of the immense contribution made by loyal Confederate blacks to her war effort. This contribution is probably one of the greatest untold stories in the annals of our nation's history. Not only was it their finest hour, to use Churchill's phrase, it was an hour which white America generally refuses to acknowledge--to this day. This was a valiant contribution not calculated to earn the praise of men. But even though it was not offered by menpleasers, our duty of acknowledging this long-ignored heroism remains.
Before discussing some of the particulars, a reply should first be made to an anticipated objection. The modern egalitarian mindset is incapable of recognizing an aristocratic and feudal society, which the antebellum South was, without assuming as axiomatic that the subordinate classes must, of necessity, have been constantly seething with resentment and discontent. Therefore any black "contribution" to the cause of the South (if you can prove it, which you can't because we're not listening) must have been coerced at the end of the lash, and there ends the discussion.
But biblical students of history know that conflicts such as the Southern War of Independence are never as tidy as the mind of the historical propagandist would like to make them. Thousands of white Southerners fought for the North. Thousands of white Northerners, called "Copperheads," were Southern sympathizers. Some states, like Maryland and Virginia, split in two. The Vice-President of the Federals was a native of Tennessee, and the Vice-President of the Confederacy was an ardent opponent of secession. But the king of all such oddities is the great untold oddity--the ardent support of the Confederacy by tens of thousands of blacks, both free and slave. This black support was like the rest of the country--torn and mixed. Some blacks were trying to prove themselves. Some wanted adventure, while others were fighting for self-preservation. About one quarter of the free blacks in the South were well-to-do slave owners. [1] They knew a Northern victory would ruin them, which it did. But the majority of blacks who supported the cause did so in order to protect the way of life they had always known.
Black Southerners were Southerners. Many of them were patriots. They were natives of a land at war, and their response to the invasion of their country should not be at all surprising. The wave of patriotic fervor which swept the South clearly included the black population. Across the South, blacks frequently and publicly offered their whole-hearted service to the cause of the Confederacy. Charles Tinsley, spokesman for Peterburg's free blacks, was representative. "We are willing to aid Virginia's cause to the utmost extent of our ability." [2]
But of course the central issue is not how blacks felt about the war when it first began, because emotions always run high for everyone at such a time. But what did Southern blacks do to contribute tangibly to the war effort "across five Aprils"?
Three areas are worthy of mention. The first is to recognize that the infrastructure of the Southern war effort was heavily dependent upon faithful and loyal black labor. The South was thoroughly dependent upon its black population, and could not do anything, much less go to war, without black involvement and support. Speaking of slaves, Benjamin Quarles notes the obvious--that slaves were used in the Southern war effort: "Not far behind the lines, and frequently within them, were the military laborers who threw up the foundations for the artillery, built the forts and dug the entrenchments." [3] What is not so obvious, especially to modern eyes, is the fact that, under such conditions, such work could not have been accomplished without a great loyalty and willingness to serve. On the home front, blacks manned the mines, the munitions factories, and kept the crops growing which in turn kept the army in the field. Many black slaves stepped into the vacated role of white overseers, and served there diligently.
Second, we must remember the numerous body servants who accompanied their masters to war, and who faithfully served them throughout the conflict. Regarding this, Charles Harper stated, "No class of servants had such excellent opportunities to desert or to evidence disloyalty. Yet this class almost never deserted. Black Confederates followed their masters to war, worked as teamsters, laborers, foragers and cooks in the Confederate army, and did yeoman service, shouldering arms and burning gunpowder in combat, and when captured entered Yankee prisons as prisoners of war." [4] This class of Confederates exhibited great courage, resourcefulness, and loyalty. Nathan Bedford Forrest said of the servants who went to war with him that no better Confederates ever lived.
The third area is the direct contribution of the black combat troops. The best estimate places the number of black Confederate combatants at around 40,000. The first Union officer to lose his life in combat, Major Winthrop, was probably shot by a black man. [5] A Union medical officer observed Stonewall's troops marching through Fredrickburg in 1862, and calculated that about 5 percent of his force were black men, armed as soldiers, and fully integrated with the ranks. [6] One Union soldier wrote a letter to the Indianapolis Star, and which was reprinted by the New York Tribune. It said, in part, "A body of seven hundred Negro infantry opened fire on our men, wounding two lieutenants and two privates. . . . We have heard of a regiment of Negroes at Manassas, and another at Memphis, and still another at New Orleans, but did not believe it until it came so near home and attacked our men." [7] It is true the Confederate national government did not approve the use of blacks under arms until late in the war, but the decentralized nature of the CSA must also be recognized. Many opportunities for black service existed in local and state units, and those opportunities were taken.
Blacks also served effectively as snipers. One remarkable sharpshooter would settle in tall trees, and begin to systematically pick off Union soldiers. Because of this a detachment of soldiers was sent to get him, and after much maneuvering, finally surrounded him. One of the Yanks yelled up at him, "I say big nigger, you better come down from there, you are captured." The black Confederate's last words were, "Not as this chile knows of!" He resumed fire, and was immediately killed. [8]
We must recognize the racism that has afflicted many in the South since the war is the fruit of the Reconstruction, not of slavery and the war. Those southern whites who today despise blacks, far from showing on-going resistance, are continuing to submit to that humanist nightmare which was first imposed at Reconstruction. Far better would be the attitude of Southern whites who fought and bled alongside Southern blacks. At a reunion of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry in 1876, Col. William Sanford said, "And to you our colored friends . . . we say welcome. We can never forget your faithfulness in the darkest hours of our lives. We tender to you our hearty respect and love, for you never faltered in duty nor betrayed our trust." [9] The Confederate heritage includes deep affection between white and black.
Nevertheless, some of our readers may question the wisdom of emphazing this issue. "We have enough problems in our culture without resurrecting a war that ended one hundred and thirty years ago." This may seem as fruitful to them as a partisan rehash of the Second Punic War. But we are convinced that we will not understand the current civil conflicts which surround us until we go back and learn the truth about the War Between the States. Until we get that particular history lesson straight, we will continue to get every other subsequent history lesson wrong. The battles we fight today are simply a later stage in the same war.
The war was over the meaning of constitutional government, the nature of federalism, the life of republics, and the definition of civic liberty. Not one of these issues has become a museum piece since the close of the war, and all of them began long before the war. We cannot hope to fight the good fight now while repudiating those who fought the same fight earlier.
But still the apparently reasonable advice is offered to us. "Give it up. Let it go. Stop fighting old battles. Quit tilting at windmills. Just accept the past. Let's just do what we can now. Don't inflame old wounds. Just let it go. "
Not as this chile knows of.
Thema
1 Steve Wilkins, "African Confederates: Black Partisans of the Southern Cause" (An address given to the 6th Annual Confederate Heritage Conference) p. 5.
2 Ervin Jordan, Jr., Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virgina (Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia) p. 216.
3 Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (New York: Da Capo Press, 1953) p. xiii.
4 Barrow, Segars, & Rosenburg, Forgotten Confederates: An Anthology About Black Southerners (Atlanta, GA: Southern Heritage Press, 1995) p. 17.
5 Ibid., p. 19.
6 Ibid., p. 22.
7 Richard Rollins, ed., Black Southerners in Gray: Essays On Afro-Americans In Confederate Armies (Murfreesboro, TN: Southern Heritage Press, 1994) pp. 19-20.
8 Ibid., p. 22.
9 Ibid., p. 66.
The north could hardly believe in the Secession, much less in armed Negroes. In 1862, however, Northerners read a headline and story in the New York Tribune, reprinted from a Union soldier's letter to the Indianapolis Star (December 23, 1861)"A body of seven hundred Negro infantry opened fire on our men, wounding two lieutenants and two privates. The wounded men testify positively that they were shot by negroes, and that not less than seven hundred were present, armed with muskets. This is, indeed, a new feature in the war. We have heard of a regiment of Negroes at Manassas, and another at Memphis, and still another at New Orleans, but did not believe it until it came so near home [New Market Bridge near Newport News] and attacked our men. It is time this thing was understood, and if they fight us with negroes, why should we not fight them with negroes, too? We have disbelieved these reports too long, and now let us fight the devil with fire. The wounded man swear they will kill any negro they see, so excited are they at the destardly act. It remains to be seen how long the Government will now hesitate, when they learn these facts. One of the lieutenants was shot in the back of the nect and is not expected to live."
Dr. H.C. Blackerby, Blacks in Blue and Gray, 1979, p. 5
George W. Williams, a Union Negro soldier wrote:
"The South took the initiative in employing Negroes as soldiers, but they were free Negroes, and many of them owned large interests in Louisiana and South Carolina."
George W. Williams, A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion. Harper & Bros, 1888, quoted by Dr. H.C. Blackerby, Blacks in Blue and Gray, 1979, p. 5
Please provide DOCUMENTATION from the 6 justices siding with Chief Justice Taney that the holding in the decision had been changed.
The Court should respect the structure of the government, which includes the concept a majoritarian rule.
ROTFLM@O!!! Justice Ginsberg, is that you????? The Court must respect the Constitution, not whims and wishes. Not decisions from foreign courts, not even Scottish law.
You failed to notice that I was quoting from Fehrenbacher. You have his case study of the Dred Scott decision. You know it is a devastating indictment of Taney's conduct in the case.
Not hardly. It's a book which attempts to discredit a very sound legal decision. Exactly when were those 7 justices impeached? Who started impeachment proceedings if the decision was so wrong? Who presided over the trial, and what was the outcome? Yankees were upset because they'd have to SHARE the territories with blacks, Lincoln appealed to their racist bent as he shared their visions of white supremacy and a lily-white west.
Well said. Bump.
After a war the history books are written by the victors. To say that the Dred Scott decision has not been given fair treatment would be a miracle of understatement. It has even been called the cause of the Civil War.On the place of the Dred Scott decision in the history of the times, no one has thrown greater illumination than Albert J. Beveridge, lawyer, author, prominent liberal Republican, and for many years United States Senator from Indiana.
Beveridge's Life of John Marshall is one of the truly great American biographies. He himself considered it the most satisfying achievement of his extraordinarily active and successful career. So well was it received that scholars and publishers urged him to undertake a life of Chief Justice Taney. His early schooling, however, had left him prejudiced against Taney, and he chose instead to do a life of Lincoln.
In his Abraham Lincoln, Beveridge devoted a long chapter to the Dred Scott case, and with his usual meticulous care he made a painstaking study of letters, newspapers, and other sources relating to it. His reaction appears in the chapter itself and is further described by his biographer, Claude G. Bowers, in Beveridge and the Progressive Era (1932):
"Very quickly under his investigation the charge of 'conspiracy,' born of the delay of the court, was relegated to the junk heap of political canards... Quite as astonishing was the discovery that among the great mass of the people, and even among the politicians, there had been no excitement. Poring over hundreds of the letters exchanged during 1857, he failed to find more than an occasional mild mention of the decision. A careful combing of the letters of John P. Hale, [1] in possession of the New Hampshire Historical Society, failed to disclose any popular interest at all. 'I have gone through them,' he wrote, 'and... no mention is made of the Dred Scott decision during the whole of 1857, except one request immediately after the decision was handed down, from a Republican club for Hale... to make them a speech about it. This is precisely what the letters to Trumbull [2] show; from the time the decision was given down to the end of 1857 only one person that wrote to Trumbull made mention of the decision; and that was done casually and incidentally in the course of a long letter on political subjects
In his Dred Scott chapter, Beveridge says: "Indeed in all private political correspondence, North and South, during those months, plenty is said about Kansas, the Mormons, public lands, hard times; but practically nothing about the judicial pronouncement which radical newspapers, preachers, and politicians were loudly declaring had prepared the way to spread slavery over the whole land, and therefore had convulsed with rage the people of the North." Beveridge believed, according to Bowers, that "the biggest historical discovery he had made was that there had been no popular excitement over the decision for almost a year, and until it was made the object of a campaign attack."
It was not until March 1858, a year after the decision, that Senator Seward of New York made his formal "conspiracy" charge in the Senate. Then in his "House Divided" speech in June 1858, Lincoln made a humorous and far more telling charge to the same general effect. The Dred Scott case and its legal consequences became a leading issue in the Lincoln-Douglas debates and in the i860 presidential election. It was the 1860 election, more than anything else, that so firmly riveted the decision into the public mind. The attack was for political effect, but so vicious that the mere name of the case became a slur. The Republican victory fortified this attitude and blended it into the hatreds of the Civil War.
At first, Taney took a philosophic view of the attacks. On August 29, 1857, he wrote ex-President Pierce that "At my time of life when my end must be near, I should have rejoiced to find that the irritating strifes of this world were over, and that I was about to depart in peace with all men and all men in peace with me. Yet perhaps it is best as it is. The mind is less apt to feel the torpor of age, when it is thus forced into action by public duties. And I have an abiding confidence that this act of my judicial life will stand the test of time and the sober judgment of the country..." His confidence was not to be justified, and Seward's insinuations infuriated him, as did the repeated accusations of ignorance and bias.
Pride was strong in Taney. He was devoid of arrogance but he set a high value on his integrity. Once again he took up his pen. Pleading lack of time in the preparation of his Dred Scott opinion, he prepared a voluminous supplement justifying his conclusions on the issue of Negro citizenship. This he left with Samuel Tyler who in due course published it as an appendix to his Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney. Although this buttresses the citation of authority in the original opinion, its chief significance is the light it throws on Taney himself. He was unwilling to engage in public controversy, but when he was close to the bursting point writing was his safety valve.
The most incisive comment on the Dred Scott case is that of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. "It is unfortunate," he said, "that the estimate of Chief Justice Taney's judicial labors should have been so largely influenced by the opinion which he delivered in the case of Dred Scott... the charge which formed part of the violent and malignant attack upon the decision, that it was the result of a conspiracy or political bargain, had not the slightest foundation... Whatever may be said of the merits of the case... there can be no doubt of the integrity of the members of the Court and of the sincerity of the action of the Chief Justice, who thought he was rendering a national service. In looking at the background of the decision, it is apparent that there was a fundamental error in the supposition that the imperious question which underlay the controversy could be put at rest by a judicial pronouncement..."
[1] Abolitionist Senator from New Hampshire.
[2] United States Senator from Illinois, also a prominent abolitionist, although more moderate than Hale.
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