'Gods and Generals' ... and an angry Mayor Dow

Mobile Register ^ | 10/13/03 | Jim Van Anglen

[x]

The people trying to act like the war wasn't about more than just slavery are guilty of rewriting history, but the victor has that perogative...

I don't know -- sometimes it looks like Gods and Generals was guilty of saying that the war was about less than slavery.

[laotzu]

"But Black slavery was certainly taken to heart in the American South..in a way that it never was in the Northern states."

It is true that both the Union, and the Confederacy both had slaves.

The Confederacy put them to real use. For the most part, they were not kept as house servants, or status symbols, but; because there was real work to be done, they were utilized "in a way that it never was in the Northern states."

Despite not having a real use for them, except as an industry, the North was quite adept at keeping, and selling slaves.

[Non-Sequitur]

Please. Check out how many Presidents, Vice Presidents, Cabinet Members and Speakers of the House before Lincoln came from slaveholding states before you make such claims.

I assume this is where I come in? I can hardly sum it up better than Alexander Stephens, vice president of the confederacy, did:

"But again, gentlemen, what do we have to gain from this proposed change of our relationship with the general government? We have always had control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a majority of Presidents chosen from the south; as well as the control and management of most of those chosen form the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their twenty four, thus controlling the Executive Department. So too of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South, and but eleven from the North; although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the Free States, yet a majority of the Court has always been from the South. This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interest in the Legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding Presidents (pro Tempore) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of Representatives, from their greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other department of the general government. Attorney-Generals we have had fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the Free States, from their greater commercial interests, yet we have had the principle embassies, so as to secure the world markets for our cotton, tobacco, and suger on the best possible terms. We have had the vast majority of the higher officers of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North. Equally so of Clerks, Auditors, and Comptrollers filling the Sxecutive department; the records show that for the last fifty years, of the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the Republic." - Alexander Stephens, January 1861

So it would appear that it was the Federal Government of the South, not the North, who nurtured, grew, defended, bankrolled, and built an entire empire on the importing of slaves.

The North had slaves before the South, and kept slaves after those in the South were freed.

Wrong on both counts. Slavery started in North America in Florida, grew in Virginia, and ended in parts of the south at the very same moment that it ended in the North, December 1865.

[Lee Heggy]

I beg your pardon...Lincoln's seizure of powers not delegated to him by the Constitution, in the name of "saving" the Constitution ? destroyed constitutional government in America, and opened the door to the Progressives and the Democrats.

Lincoln's usurpation, and his fundamental alteration of the American political system, destroyed the structural barricades which protected the United States from the horror of unlimited democracy, i.e., from a government which used success at the ballot box as a justification for reshaping society in its own image. Do you think 'Liberals' in their present incarnation spontaneously appeared? THAT is 'silly' sir.

[PaulJ]

Actually, you had responded to my question posed to Redleg in Post #25. I wanted to know, other than slavery, what State's Rights he was refering to as a cause of the war.

[Moby Grape]

Was it really trying to say the war was about "less" than slavery? Or perhaps, trying to show how people could be so devoted to causes on both sides?

[x]

Yes, Stephen Lang is a good actor, but the script didn't help him. Perhaps those scenes might have made a good play focused on the death of Jackson, perhaps not. But they looked excessive in a movie with other things in focus.

Good is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

No argument there.

[monkey]

In War and Peace, a nobleman is injured. He lies on the ground, looks up at the sky and the scenery, sees some soldiers walking over here, talking over there. It seems rather pleasant. And why are these fellows running? Why, he realizes, it must be to kill me, me whom everybody likes! (Tolstoi fought in the Crimean war.)

G&G gives that sense of the 19th-century battlefield, the cross between the usual-war-story bullets flying, a mechanics convention, and a large faire.

Clearly, it will not appeal to most filmgoers; it's not really a film. The teenagers sitting across from us said, "Geez. They couldn't even make the battle scenes exciting."

[Non-Sequitur]

Lincoln's seizure of powers not delegated to him by the Constitution, in the name of "saving" the Constitution destroyed constitutional government in America...

What seizures were those?

[x]

"Gettysburg" did a good job of showing why both sides fought. "Gods and Generals" was overkill. Pumping up the Confederate view so much, it was less convincing in the end. Maxwell kept hammering away at his points, rather than making them and letting them sink in.

[PaulJ]

What seizures were those?

You can find the answers to that at this Anti-Lincoln Web Site. The same place he's getting them from.

[stainlessbanner]

Gods & Generals was about the men and their battles - it was not about politics of which slavery was a key issue. Any American would be hard-pressed to leave the movie without a heavy heart.

Ewert is unsure if he wants to give his readers a dissertation on "revisionism", a history lesson of the Late War, or a movie review. Ewert attacks the "causes of the war", but fails to notice Gods & Generals begins after the War has begun. Ewert mocks "the army of the Lord", referring to the strong Christian leader Gen. Thomas J. Jackson as well as the "didactic sermonizing" throughout the film.

Ewert goes on to criticize the production as "highly unrealistic to anybody familiar with real war" and "serious historians know such scenes are hogwash", when, in fact, leading Civil War historians were consultants for the movie.

Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review website, is noted with negative reviews of the film from authoritative sources such as the NY Times and LA Times. A conservative movie with Christian undertones got bad reviews from liberal media outlets -- I'm shocked! The fact the SPLC carries his review adds more credence to Gods & Generals being a great film and an honorable attempt to portray a complex time in America's history.

Gods and Generals is not for the sitcom crowd that enjoys homosexual jokes and "reality" tv hows. It is a deep look into the men who fought, the reasons they did, and the result of their fateful decisions. If you want a great production to spur conversation, thought, and research into America's past, watch Gods & Generals.

Bottom Line: Ewert should read the book on which the movie is based and reconsider his unfounded review.

[Non-Sequitur]

It's true to the book in what it showed.

Please. There were 54 or 55 chapters in the book. There were more chapters where Lee was the central figure than where Jackson was the central figure. There were more chapters where Hancock was the central figure than where Jackson was the central figure. Yet there is more screen time for that ludicrous Bonnie Blue Flag scene than for Hancock. The movie was a poor, over-long, over-blown interpretation of the book. IMHO, of course.

True story. The movie did such a poor job of telling the story that as I was walking out after it was over I heard a 20-something girl ask her 20-something companion. "So who was Stonewall Jackson anyway?" He didn't have an answer.

[stainlessbanner]

I was walking out after it was over I heard a 20-something girl ask her 20-something companion...

Lurking, Non?!

[colorado tanker]

I thought the movie was poor, too, although not for the reasons given in this review, but for what you said. Too bad. I loved Gettysburg and hoped God and Generals would be of the same quality. I might have fallen asleep, but did the movie just pass over Antietam?

[Non-Sequitur]

No answers there, just the same claim that Lincoln usurped powers not granted him by the Constitution and nothing to support it. You suppose he has something else up his sleeve?

[Lee Heggy]

Dear Non Sequitur, I will give you one example from many. On September 15, 1863, Lincoln imposed Congressionally authorized martial law. The authroizing act allowed the President to suspend habeas corpus through out the entire United States. Lincoln imposed the suspension on "prisoners of war, spies, or aiders and abettors of the enemy," as well as on other classes of people, such as draft dodgers. The President's proclamation was challenged in ex parte Milligan (71 US 2 [1866]). The Supreme Court ruled that Lincoln's imposition of martial law (by way of suspension of habeas corpus) was unconstitutional.

In arguments before the Court, the counsel for the United States spoke to the question of "what is martial law?" "Martial law," it was argued, "is the will of the commanding officer of an armed force, or of a geographical military department, expressed in time of war within the limits of his military jurisdiction, as necessity demands and prudence dictates, restrained or enlarged by the orders of his military chief, or supreme executive ruler." In other words, martial law is imposed by a local commander on the region he controls, on an as-needed basis. Further, it was argued, "The officer executing martial law is at the same time supreme legislator, supreme judge, and supreme executive. As necessity makes his will the law, he only can define and declare it; and whether or not it is infringed, and of the extent of the infraction, he alone can judge; and his sole order punishes or acquits the alleged offender."

In this case, Lambden Milligan, for whom the case is named, was arrested in Indiana as a Confederate sympathizer. Indiana, like the rest of the United States, was part of a military district set up to help conduct the war. Milligan was tried by military commission and sentenced to die by hanging. After his conviction, Milligan petitioned the Circuit Court for habeas corpus, arguing that his arrest, trial, and conviction were all unconstitutional. What the Supreme Court had to decide, it said, was "Had [the military commission] the legal power and authority to try and punish [Milligan]?"

Resoundingly, the Court said no. The Court stated what is almost painfully obvious: "Martial law ... destroys every guarantee of the Constitution." The Court reminded the reader that such actions were taken by the King of Great Britain, which caused, in part, the Revolution. "Civil liberty and this kind of martial law cannot endure together; the antagonism is irreconcilable; and, in the conflict, one or the other must perish."

[Non-Sequitur]

...but did the movie just pass over Antietam?

Never even mentioned it, if memory serves.

[Ditto]

Slavery was nurtured, invested in, and profited from by the Union before there was even such a thing as the Confederacy.(the "south" is a point on a compass, and did exist at Jamestown: the "South" was the Confederacy, and did not exist at Jamestown)

Ah.... more word games. By the Union do you mean states such as South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, or is Union just those damnyankees?

Pennsylvania, abolished slavery in 1780, before the United States had even officially won it's freedom Before then, the British refused to allow any colonies to abolish slavery. The slave trade was a major source of revenue for the Crown.

[colorado tanker]

Kind of a glaring omission for what many historians think was the decisive battle of the war, and which victory Lincoln used to launch the Emancipation Proclamation.