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Endless complaints. |
Posted on 12/31/2004 2:21:30 PM PST by 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?
I can only speak for myself, but the reason you would get no apology from me is that I don't believe "tens of thousands" of atrocites were committed. Possibly, the difference amounts to a matter of definition, but I equate "atrocity" with "war crime." And when you talk about war crimes, you need to provide specificity, not just anecdotal evidence.
Is burning some Georgian famer's crops, or conficating some Tennessean's mule a war crime? No, not if those people were supplying the rebel war effort. Is shooting into a violent, hostile, and riotous mob a war crime? No. It is self defense.
So when you paint an entire population as war criminals, you lose credibility, because you have not differnetiated real war crimes (and they did happen - on both sides) from bogus war stories.
one of your group said: "i'm truly pleased that your family was killed, as they got exactly what they deserved."
Who?
Example?
The WebRoots Library has the "Chronicles of Baltimore" on line. The account Freeper stainlessbanner posted earlier about a "murdered" citizen of Baltimore is found there.
http://www.webroots.org/library/usahist/cobmd018.html
It is very clear from the "Chronicles" account, that the pro-secession mob was both violent and irrational, and that any armed response from the federal troops was justified.
When the government becomes the oppressor, revolution is always justified. The fire-eating southern secessionists, however, could not justify "revolution due to oppression," as did their forefathers. So they purported to invoke a doubtful political theory with no constitutional basis.
Secession, as practiced in 1860-61, was merely racism disguised as political theory.
Do you want me to post more from Prof. Dew's Apostles of Disunion? It pains me to even type the foul words of the Secession Commissioners - southerners addressing other southerners about the real motivation for secession.
A little ice on that boo-boo should help.
the damnyankee army's CRIMINAL MINORITY committed tens of thousands of such war crimes.
FEW of those crimes were ever punished, by the damnyankee high command (i have posted several times before with full documentation, the order of a yankee officer at Point Lookout that "unwarranted shootings of prisoners after this date are prohibited. such persons as may continue to do such will be fined the sum of one dollar."), thus i must assume that the high command either did not care and/or possibly encouraged such criminal behaviors against helpless POWs & civilians.
free dixie,sw
CRIMINALS can always excuse their crimes against the innocent.
free dixie,sw
"Upon the shot being fired, Mr. Hall asked him if he was hurt. His only reply was, "I am killed."< /snip>
Unarmed citizen gets killed by a potshot. Thanks for the link.
i think of dew as a REVISIONIST "on a mission" & thus his work, imVho, is SUSPECT.
free dixie,sw
it hurts the damnyankee apologists feelings to tell the TRUTH about the CRIMINAL filth in blue. (rotflmRao!)
free dixie,sw
NO American state ever functioned in a fully sovereign manner. Prior to 1776, still as colonies, they had already formed an association. From July 1776 to the present, certain sovereign powers (such as making war or peace, maintaining an army or a navy, and conducting diplomacy, etc.) have been exercised by the general/national government. Those sovereign powers were denied to the states - ergo - the states were not fully sovereign.
Furthermore, more than a decade had passed since the United States had become a sovereign nation and operated under the form of government outlined in the Articles of Confederation (proposed 1776, ratified 1781). That form of government had proved to be unworkable, in part because individual states were abusing their powers. The point of Philadelphia Convention was to strengthen the general government - at the expense of the states - and to create a "more perfect Union." The people of all of the states, in convention, unconditionally ratified the new Constitution (even if Rhode Island was brought in by the narrowest of margins, late, and kicking and screaming).
What's more, the outgoing government peaceably provided for the incoming new government, to provide a seamless transition between the two. There was no secession, no revolution, here.
Although the "laughingly shaking his fist" part of the account sounds contrived, let's suppose for a moment it is accurate. Is it reasonable, given that these troops had been under attack by violent mobs, that they understood the gestures of more "civilians" to be hostile? If so, there was no murderous intent, but rather, that of self defense. I think the mob is culpable for all of the deaths that day.
Ironically, and perhaps sadly, Gov. Hicks had gone directly to Lincoln pleading for help to avoid a situation like this.
More dead (from the link), though I have read the number of dead/wounded was never officially totaled:
The following is a complete list of killed and wounded in the riot: Citizens killed--Robert W. Davis, Philip S. Miles, John McCann, John McMahon, William R. Clark, James Cart, Francis Maloney, Sebastian Gill, William Maloney, William Reed, Michael Murphy. Patrick Griffith. Citizens wounded--F. X. Ward,--Coney, James Myers, boy name unknown. Soldiers killed--Addison O. Whitney, a young mechanic of Lowell, Mass.; Luther C. Ladd, another young mechanic from Lowell; Charles A. Taylor, a decorative painter of Boston; and Sumner H. Needham, a plasterer by trade. And many soldiers wounded.
Sorry stand, but that dog don't hunt. The "Chronicles" were a southern account (at the time).
the writer's of the Constitution wanted "a more perfect union" but NOT a powerful central government, which would cede many powers of the states to that government, beyond those NECESSARY things like the postal service/coinage/limited taxation/general defense.
your post is an excellent example of the UNIONIST/REVISIONIST view of history BUT it does NOT make you/it any less INACCURATE.
sorry, but anything more than a scan of the founding father's writings on this subject indicates the REVISIONIST/unionist heresy is exactly that: heresy.
free dixie,sw
AT BEST, Dew's work is a MINORITY OPINION of a MINORITY of the south's population.
free dixie,sw
Reading now - correspondence between Hicks, Brown and Lincoln are particularly interesting.
Dew recounts growing up as a young boy in Florida, how his gransmother was a "card-carying member of the UDC," how he was given a .22-caliber rifle and Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants on his 14th birthday, how he carried A Confederate Youth's Primer with him (a gift from one of his father's law partners), how he displayed the Confederate battle flag on his dorm room when he attended a private high school in Virginia.
Dew has impeccible southern credentials. He's no "scalawag." He just grew up and left the old lost cause myths behind - in favor of the truth.
Yes. That your claim that states issued their own Letters of Marque is ridiculous. Such actions would have been illegal under both the Constitution and international agreements.
Of course he can say things like that. That is why I provided the link. But like every story, when you dig a little deeper, the facts become more apparent.
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