Confederate States Of America (2005)

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.

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.

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.

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.

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary February 11th, 2005

5:58 P.M. EST

"THE PRESIDENT: Thank you for that wonderful performance. Laura and I welcome you all to the White House."

"I appreciate the members of my Cabinet who are here, and former members of the Cabinet who are here. I thank Senator Bill Frist for joining us, as well as Congressman Mel Watt. Thank you both for coming. I appreciate Michael Steele, the Lt. Governor of the great state of Maryland, for joining us."

I want to thank Bruce Cole, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I appreciate Brian Lamb joining us today, the President and CEO of C-SPAN. I thank the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission members and the Advisory Committee for joining us today. I appreciate all the Lincoln scholars and authors who are here.

" particularly appreciate Sam Waterston and Lynn and Graham for joining us, as well as Harold Holzer and Edith and Meg. Thank you all for coming."

"Sam and Harold have had a good many reviews since they first took "Lincoln: Seen and Heard" on the road. Perhaps the most enthusiastic review I heard came from two unimpeachable sources, Mother and Dad -- (laughter) -- who told how much they enjoyed the performance when they saw it in Houston. Tonight we've had the special honor of listening to Lincoln's words being read in the very house where so many of them were written."

"Harold Holzer has written, coauthored, or edited 23 books on Lincoln and the Civil War. He co-chairs the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and in his spare time, works for one of Laura's favorite museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He's an avid New York Yankee fan -- who had a miserable year last year. (Laughter.) He has won many awards for his work, and his latest book is, "Lincoln At Cooper Union."

"This evening I can let you all in on a secret. Tomorrow it will be announced that Allen Guelzo, who is with us tonight, and Harold Holzer are this year's first and second place winners of the prestigious Lincoln Prize."

"Congratulations." (Applause.)

"Those of you who know Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy should know that America's most famous assistant district attorney has portrayed Abraham Lincoln on stage, on television, and so I'm told, even in ballet. (Laughter.) He didn't dance. (Laughter.) But he did narrate a special version of Aron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, while ballet dancers performed around him. (Laughter.) Sam has said, "If I have to be typecast, I'd like to be typecast as Abraham Lincoln." I like a guy who aims high." (Laughter.)

"In his readings tonight, Sam noted that it was on this very day back in 1861 that Abraham Lincoln said good-bye to his home in Springfield, Illinois, never to return. Over the next four years, from this house, Lincoln would endure a bitter civil war that included terrible defeats, as well as ringing victories; he'd sign the Emancipation Proclamation -- right upstairs -- and he would live to see his hopes for peace and unity rewarded before his life was taken at Ford's Theater on Good Friday, 1865."

"The Civil War was decided on the battlefield; the larger fight for America's soul was waged with Lincoln's words. In his own day, Lincoln set himself squarely against a culture that held that some human beings were not intended by their Maker for freedom. And as President, he acted in the conviction that holding the Union together was the only way to hold America true to the founding promise of freedom and equality for all. And that is why, in my judgment, he was America's greatest President."

"We're familiar with the words of the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural, so eloquently read by Sam. And this performance reminds us that Lincoln wrote his words to be spoken aloud -- to persuade, to challenge, and to inspire. Abraham Lincoln was a master of the English language, but his true mother tongue was liberty."

"I hope that every American might have the experience we had here tonight, to hear Lincoln's words delivered with Lincoln's passion, and to leave with a greater appreciation for what these words of freedom mean in our own time."

"Thank you all again. Please join us at the reception. And may God continue to bless our great land."

(Applause.)

END 6:04 P.M. EST

President Bush often lists Lincoln among the predecessors he most admires. In last month's inaugural address, Bush quoted Lincoln's famous remark that "those who deny freedom to others, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it."

(and should not retain it)

If you look what I wrote I didn't say one word about whether what post-Reconstruction Southerners did was right and wrong. My point was that what Southerners did after Reconstruction did can't be blamed on Northerners. It was an adaptation of what Southerners -- or if you prefer, Americans, very much including White Southerners -- had been doing all along, and what they wanted to do, not an emotional reaction to Reconstruction. If the Republicans had turned the state governments immediately back over to ex-confederates or if they'd tried to bring Black suffrage and biracial governments, the result would have been more or less the same once the unreconstructed took over again.

Any effort or any threat to bring voting rights and civil equality to the freedmen would be regarded as a provocation and a justification for a crackdown by the ex-confederates when they came back into power. But if you look at what they planned to do from the beginning, it's clear that whatever happened in Reconstruction wasn't the main cause of segregation and the disenfranchisement of African Americans. I didn't venture an opinion about whether this was justified or not -- it's hard, I hope for 21st century Americans to feel that segregation was justified, though not impossible, as your posts indicate -- just that it wasn't something that Southerners were forced into.

Was it necessary to deny rights to freedmen and frighten them with strong arm tactics to prevent some bloodbath by Blacks against Whites? Most of your friends might disagree, preferring to blame Northerners for the problems of the postwar South. That's something you should take up with them. But consider: for the dozen years of Reconstruction -- less in most states -- there was no Black-on-White bloodbath. Where was the bloodbath after 1965? You've bought into the racialist myths of the era and the idea that power-sharing means repression, that one either has everything all one's own way or one is a slave, perhaps because you like all-or-nothing categorical alternatives. Fortunately, life and politics aren't always so polarized.

But you can trust x; he wouldn't lie to you, even though you deserve to die.

You like to dramatize and overdramatize, don't you? I mean it's obvious by now. When somebody disagrees with you you talk as thought they are torturing or killing you. That kind of mindset is all to familiar from recent history. If the Serbs don't get Kosovo, or Hungary doesn't win it's lost lands back, or Ireland remains divided somebody is trampling on your face or cutting into your windpipe. Fortunately, much of the world has gotten beyond such histrionics, and one great thing about America is that we have little time for indulging in them.

That is the way that hysterics and other lunatics argue. Everything is turned into a matter of life and death, of survival or destruction. You can do that if you want, as a description of how people thought at the time, but 1) you can't simply dismiss the argument when it's used against you -- you can't argue that the end justifies the means for White Southerners but not for other people, and claim to be evenhanded or consistent or expect to have any credibility at all -- and 2) you can't give your 19th century Southerners the last word and ignore present-day judgments of their actions.

So if repressive measures are justified for White Southerners, they would be justified for unionists seeing their republic torn apart and their compatriot's rights violated in rebel areas, and for Blacks who knew all to well what it meant to be reduced to actual slavery. And if we can somehow understand post-Reconstruction segregation in light of the standards of the time we don't have applaud it or justify it now that our own standards are different. We can say that Southern options were limited, and understand that, while still regretting that better options weren't available or sought.

Options were likewise limited in 16th century France or 17th century Britain. We recognize that what political actors did in those days couldn't reflect 21st century attitudes. Therefore, we don't choose one side of the conflict in those eras and wrap it in self-justifying myths. We've grown up with regard to such historical events and see them in perspective. That's something we should be doing about the Civil War by now. Hobbyists may well maintain that history would have turned out better if Guelphs had defeated Ghibellines or Lancasterians Yorkists (or is it vice versa?), but anyone who invests great passion in such causes is probably a crank.

Earlier in the thread you wrote:

More to the point, you are trying to polemicize against people who disagree with you by making them over into slavery advocates, which is just vile ad hominem.

If there is nothing to my charge, then why do you keep demanding that we defend slavery, when we don't?

Take your ad hominem and stick it.

Maybe you were provoked, but you do defend slavery. You certainly have excused segregation as a way of protecting the White population. And you've done all you could to defend slaveowners, and to remove the moral stigma from slaveowning. You and your pals have certainly argued that the right to own slaves had to be respected in 19th century America. Then when someone connects the dots, you get all angry about it. You want to have things both ways: to skate as close as you can to defending slavery in the Old South, and to throw fits, claiming that others are misrepresenting you. I'm not saying that you would want to own slaves yourself, or that you approve of slaveowning or want slavery back, but you certainly have defended slaveowning and slavery. It's what you do around here.

Your cronies attack Lincoln for showing less support for slavery and segregation in his time than you do looking back on the same period. For them, he is pro-slavery and racist. If those epithets apply to him, don't they fit you as well? How would your views of 19th century history actually differ if you were "pro-slavery," rather that whatever it is that you think you are instead? Please try to answer rationally. I'm not holding a dagger to your throat and don't know or want to know where you live.

Here is the text of a letter of Captain Jas. A. Parker, a member of General Wilson's staff, one of the capturers of Jefferson Davis, to the Argus of Portland, Maine. The text was on display at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond.

I am no admirer of Jefferson Davis. I am a Yankee, full of Yankee prejudices, but think it is wished to lie about him.

I was in the party that captured Jefferson Davis and saw the whole transaction from its beginning. I now say, and hope that you will publish it, that Jefferson Davis did not have on, at the time he was taken, any garments such as worn by women. He did have over his shoulders a water-proof article of clothing, something like a "Haverlocke". It was not in the least concealed. He wore a hat and did not carry a pail of water on his head, nor kettle in any way.

His wife did not tell any person that her husband might hurt somebody if he got exasperated. She behaved like a lady, and he so a gentleman, though manifestly he was chagrined at being taken into custody. I know what I am talking about. I saw Jefferson Davis many times while he was staying in Portland several years ago, and I think I was the first to recognize him at the time of his arrest.

I defy any person to find a single officer or soldier who was present at the capture of Jefferson Davis, who will say upon honor that he was disguised in women's clothes. I favor trying him for his crimes, and if he is found guilty, punish him. But I would not lie about him when the truth will certainly make it bad enough.

The Museum of the Confederacy also has on display the suit that Davis was captured in. It was a gentlemen's suit, not a dress, despite how the Harper's Weekly cartoon portrayed Davis' capture.

I'm not saying that you would want to own slaves yourself, or that you approve of slaveowning or want slavery back, but you certainly have defended slaveowning and slavery. It's what you do around here.

NO one here is claiming that we desire a return to slavery, or that slavery is a blacks natural state. Some misguided people - northern and southern - might have held that opinion, but that has long since been abandoned and rightfully so.

Regarding our defending 'slaveowning and slavery' I must disagree. Speaking only for myself, I defend the LEGALITY of such at that time in our history, EVERY state admitted to the union prior to the war agreed that it was legal. Either it was a war against a foreign confederacy, or against itself, either way is was NOT a war to end slavery - Lincoln et al are on record as it simply being a war for union, and offered permanent slavery as inducement to re-join.

Yet moral revisionists here would have us to believe that the union - which LEGALLY permitted slavery, had some mystical call from God to end slavery by force of war, leading to the death of 623,000 Americans - more than any other American cause.

Now any person in their right mind would agree that any attempted invasion of the United States by England, France or any other country for the stated purpose of forcibly ending slavery would have been illegal. Any pretensions that we have of invading Cuba to depose Castro, invading Sudan to end slavery, attack the USSR to end communism, or invading England to end a monarchy would be denounced worldwide. Such a mindset would also imply that other countries have the right to invade us to end republican forms of government, which is just as ludicrous.

Then when someone connects the dots, you get all angry about it. You want to have things both ways: to skate as close as you can to defending slavery in the Old South, and to throw fits, claiming that others are misrepresenting you.

Our ancestors (I can account for over 26) fought in the Revolutionary War for our right of self-government. Each of the colonies fought for that same principle, some declaring independence before 4 Jul 1776, some after (NY IIRC). Those colonies banded together for the common purpose of defense from foreign nations, creating a common government for the MUTUAL benefit of all parties (the states), and later created a new government that admittedly would have been applicable to fewer states than previously united - no war was fought to prevent this, nor fought to force the all to re-unite - it was a VOLUNTARY Association.

During convention, all attempts to form a national government failed, the new union was federal, a compact as admitted repeatedly during convention, in the Federalist Papers, as well as state ratifications. During convention ALL attempts to use force against a state were dismissed, as was the attempt to ratify to form one people en masse, and despite Madison's motion for officers of the militia to be appointed by the federal government to help prevent secession [which was dismissed out of hand], no prohibition against secession was inserted into the Constitution. To further emphasize the limits of the delegated powers of the federal government and induce the two remaining holdouts, an amendment was added that reserved ALL powers not DELEGATED nor prohibited to the states - the parties to the compact. Even then, three of the ratifying parties explicitly RESERVED the power to resume SELF-GOVERNMENT at the ratifying states leisure. Misrepresentation? Not on our part.

those items "mysteriously disappeared" after she passed away.

Know what you mean. My grandaddy was a "gentleman farmer" -- a county attorney by day and a chicken farmer on weekends and in retirement with a hired hand or two and his son and daughters to help with the work. After the war -- the Big Show -- my dad came home with some things he'd picked up in Germany: three helmets (two Wehrmacht, one Luftwaffe blue), a flag, a Hitler Youth dress saber, a couple of "parlor rifles" -- little 4mm rifles that I think were what people call now primer-only rounds, and one or two other things. Years went by, my dad went back into the Air Force, and then the old man got electrocuted in his barn by lightning, which burned the barn down. He was dragged out more dead than alive and was broken in health thereafter and couldn't spend as much time at the farm. Some "neighbors" came around and cleaned out the farmhouse for him, and to cover it all up burned the house down, too. "People really are...."

Lost that Hitler Youth sword to a dishonest renter, years later (it had escaped the flames), but I still have an Agfa bellows-type 35mm and a jeweler's loupe from a Focke-Wulf factory still inscribed with its former owner's name: "Schinkel", in Gothic script. Mementos of the Thousand-Year Reich.

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