Confederate States Of America (2005)

Yahoo Movies ^ | 12/31/04 | Me

[Caipirabob]

What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?

While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.

Stars with bars:

Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.

Some things are better left dead in the past:

For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.

Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.

Compelling story or KKK wet dream?:

So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?

Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.

This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.

Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.

At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.

So what do you think of this movie?

[GOPcapitalist]

The newspaper also claims that it was passed on the 2nd of November when the secession declaration is dated the 31st of October. Your newspaper seems to have a problem with accuracy.

It is accurate. November 2nd was the day they officially transmitted the act to the confederate government.

[GOPcapitalist]

I was referring to after 1871 and your implication that they retained such control until 1920. I should have known better.

Why would we be discussing events after 1871 when the subject is Saxe-Coburg and Gotha's sovereignty in 1861 when they recognized the CSA?

[Non-Sequitur]

It is accurate. November 2nd was the day they officially transmitted the act to the confederate government.

But the Charleston paper said that it was the day it passed. That was incorrect.

[Non-Sequitur]

Why would we be discussing events after 1871 when the subject is Saxe-Coburg and Gotha's sovereignty in 1861 when they recognized the CSA?

Forget it. It's often hard to follow your train of thought as it careens down the track.

[GOPcapitalist]

But the Charleston paper said that it was the day it passed. That was incorrect.

That was the day it was officially transmitted and the conclusion of its adoption process. Technically speaking, it was passed by the Senate on 10/28, the House on 10/30, signed by the Governor on 10/31, and transmitted on 11/2. You are grasping at straws, non-seq.

[GOPcapitalist]

Forget it. It's often hard to follow your train of thought as it careens down the track.

Says he who thinks Saxe-Coburg and Gotha's diplomacy after 1871 governs its sovereignty in a discussion of events from 1861.

[Gianni]

Well, it's not too long but is available online. However, there are no pictures. Would you still like a link to it?

I thought Freedom Under Lincoln carried an excellent account of goings-on in the border states. You would hate it though, it's full of facts.

[Gianni]

somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.

I thought you said that the founders provided for the demise of slavery!? Looks to me like they just codified it into the Constitution (a la: This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. ) and said, "Well, if it were really evil, then God will deal with it."

If Epperson can't find and real evidence that the founders intended to deal with the slavery issue, then I'm confident that none exists.

[Gianni]

As for it not being split between slave and non-slave, it was because those border states still holding slaves, did not think it worth while to break up the United States over defending it's expansion.

Neither did Virginia, Tennesee, etc.... or did you forget that?

[Gianni]

You can't really be that simplistic a thinker can you?

Apparently you are: No slavery, no secession.

[Gianni]

As for as the correctness of non-sequitur's statement, that is the end of the story.

Funny, Freedom Under Lincoln, to which I referred Non-seq was over 200 pages long. Had Sprague only known that it only took one sentence....

[Gianni]

Using Epperson as a source are you?

Someone always beats me to it.

[M. Espinola]

How many Israelis are under your bed, right now?

[nolu chan]

[lentulusgracchus]

I understand the position, but it seems impossible in the current world situation to be isolationist.

Well, I would tend to agree with you and disagree with Buchanan. I applaud his intentions, and at the same time I don't think his intentions are sustainable against what George Patton's chaplain called "the wicked might of the enemy".

It takes two to tango, but only one to perpetrate an atrocity.

[lentulusgracchus]

If Epperson can't find and real evidence that the founders intended to deal with the slavery issue, then I'm confident that none exists.

In his preserved letter to Jefferson, cited here from time to time, Madison ventures his own opinion of slavery, which was sternly disapproving. Of course, he probably knew Jefferson's own view of it, before sending a letter which was intended, as scholars have pointed out, to secure Jefferson's acquiescence in the proposed Constitution. The letter was sort of a condensed version of The Federalist.

So, with Madison and Jefferson, that's two Virginians who were Founders (if not Framers -- I don't think Jefferson would be counted because of his absence in Paris) who can be paired against the survival of slavery. Madison specifically mentions the strenuous insistence of Georgia and South Carolina that the Constitutional stricture against the slave trade be delayed by 20 years, whereas others of the Framers thought an early date more appropriate, so there is more evidence.

It was the profitability of agribusiness techniques and equipment (the cotton gin) that made the continuation of slavery viable and even prosperous. I've disagreed with other people here that slavery was fading economically by 1860 and cited, in another thread, a more recent economic survey article that, from production numbers, concluded the opposite: that Southern planters were land-poor not because their returns were small, but because they were good enough to encourage putting every available dollar into the ground -- and into means of production (slaves, acreage).

IMHO that is the economic reality that underlay Uncle Remus's "tar baby" story, which may reflect a congruent view of slavery and its economics among the slaves themselves.

[lentulusgracchus]

Nothing like quoting the original, in the original.

Gewiss, meine Herren. Ganz klar!

;^P

[lentulusgracchus]

Nice quote, but you are committing another error -- an error of emphasis. Quoting your source, whom I take to be Alexander Stephens,

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least.

So where are all the other reasons that he saw fit to deal with first? Slavery was "not least", to be sure -- but it wasn't necessarily "first", either, whether in magnitude or certainly in order of his recitation.

So where would Stephens put the emphasis, and would he agree with the inference you draw from his words quoted in part?

You might also put on your thinking cap and reflect on the fact that an "immediate cause" isn't necessarily the greatest or most compelling cause, either.

[lentulusgracchus]

The cause for the war was slavery.

Error: your use of the word "the". See my post above.

[Gum Shoe]

"It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war."

I think the C.S.A. probably would have been friends with the U.S.A. The C.S.A. would have fought the Spanish American War instead of the U.S.A. in their ultimate goal to include the Caribbean region, but would have sided with the allies during both World Wars.