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

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

[Lee Heggy]

"The same place he's getting them from." Not true sir. I have been teaching History for almost thirty years. I am sorry that you dislike hearing what really happened but that is really your problem.

[Non-Sequitur]

In 1869 the court, in Texas v White ruled that the southern acts of unilateral secession were unconstitutional and were illegal. Will you now proclaim that the southern leaders usurped constitutional powers not granted to them?

And while we're on the subject, the confederate congress also suspended habeas corpus. It, too, suspended the writ throughout the confederacy, even in areas hundreds of miles from the front lines where what passed for confederate courts operated freely. Would you not agree that Jefferson Davis would have been guilty of the same crime of usurping the constitution that you accuse Lincoln of? Had there been such a thing as a confederate supreme court to make such a ruling, of course.

[stainlessbanner]

Pennsylvania, abolished slavery in 1780

Yet the Penn family was a slaveholding family.

[Non-Sequitur]

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.

The Emancipation what? Proclemation, you say? Nope, that missed the cut for the movie, too.

[PaulJ]

I have no doubt you teach history but what you're doing here is merely cutting & pasting someone else's thoughts and posting them as your own without attribution (Your lastest in fact in verbatim from HERE). It's fine to quote other sources but it's intellectually dishonest to post them as your own.

[Ditto]

Yet the Penn family was a slaveholding family.

So what?

[stainlessbanner]

So what?

Exactly!

[vetvetdoug]

The Indian Tribes indiginous to the US had slaves long before we got here. You are all wrong.

The Quakers of Pennsylvania sold Indians to slavers that took them to the West Indies. The Quakers also sold whites to the slavers. Just a little addition to you all's arguement.

[Question_Assumptions]

To be free of a federal govenrment that has an insatiable appetite for power.

This again avoids the question of what power the North was trying to excercise over the South that made it want to leave the Union. I would also point out that all governments have an "insatiable appetite for power" and the Confederacy seems to have been no exception, either.

Which illustrates, just as did the North keeping their slaves, that slavery had little to do with the fight.

You make it sound as if the North kept its slaves into the 1950s. Not so. Lincoln's decision to exclude the North from the emancipation proclaimation can be explained in any number of ways including the uncertain presence of Maryland in the Union and the fact that the Northern states were not in revolt. You'll notice, however, that after the war, slavery was banned by Constitutional Amendment in all states. If the Confederacy had been let go or had won, slavery would have continued in the South for an undeterminable period of time, but certainly longer.

Having prevented secession, and, by the barrell of a gun, dragged the South, bleeding, back into the Union; the North absurdly now refers to this as the "United States".

In my experience, most Southerners do not resent the United States being a single nation the way several Freepers do.

Why, do you think, is such a mis-representation called for?

I think there is mis-representation on both sides. To say that slavery wasn't an issue is as absurd as saying that it was the only issue. The desire to reduce the complex a historical events surrounding the Civil War to a single noble cause on one side or the other is not likely to lead anyone to the truth.

[Lee Heggy]

It's hardly suprising that a court compised of reconstructionists would rule thusly. If they did or did not have the constitutional right to suceed from the Union has been debated endlessly since those days. I for one find it hard to believe that the original states would sign onto anything that they felt they couldn't get out of. It's also true that the confederate congress suspended habeas corpus but they never enforced it with the tyranny that the Union did.

We've gotten quite off topic here but I've enjoyed this little debate anyway. Everyone lost in that damn war. Thanks.

[Lee Heggy]

I never said they were my own since they are a matter of public record. Your contension has no bearing what-so-ever upon the validity of my statements from whatever source be they from my notes, library or restroom wall.

[stainlessbanner]

It's also true that the confederate congress suspended habeas corpus

.....WITH the consent of the people. Lincoln suspended the h-c without putting to a vote in Congress. The third time Jeff Davis asked Congress to suspend, the disallowed the suspension.

[Lee Heggy]

You are correct of course. I should have made the distinction.

[PaulJ]

I never said they were my own since they are a matter of public record. Your contension has no bearing what-so-ever upon the validity of my statements

Your name appears at the bottom of your posts as the author. And they are not your statements.

[gatex]

"...Name one NORTHERN state that had slaves after those in the South were freed. Just one!..."

Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware.

"When in September 1862, Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, it was a military move, giving the South four months to stop rebelling, threatening to emancipate their slaves if they continued to fight, promising to leave slavery untouched in states that came over to the North...."

....

"Thus, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued January 1, 1863, it declared slaves free in those areas still fighting against the Union (which it listed very carefully) and said nothing about slaves behind Union lines...."

[source --A People's History of the United States - 1492 - Present, by Howard Zinn, page 187]

[carton253]

No... Gods and Generals was not a movie based on the causes of the Civil War. It was not a history lesson. It was about the war as seen through the eyes of Jackson and Chamberlain mostly.

For Jackson, the war was about repulsing the invaders. For Chamberlain, the war was about freeing the slaves.

If you try to make the movie a cause and effect and a political movie... then you make the movie carry a weight it was not meant to bear.

Even Shaara's novel wasn't about the cause and effects of the Civil War, but how the war effected the soldiers that fought it.

[carton253]

I think the script helped Lang mightily. Especially the death scene. The movie was accurate in portraying what happened in the death room that day. The only embellishment was adding a few more commands from Jackson. What he said to wife, 30% of the commands he uttered in delirium, and finally his last words were truly his.

I find that the dividing line between liking the movie and not liking the moving comes down to the dialogue. The first time I watched the movie, I did think it moved slow, but not the other times I watched it... I think just the opposite.

[carton253]

Maxwell kept hammering away at his points, rather than making them and letting them sink in.

How did Maxwell do this?

[carton253]

I hadn't read your post, and I just posted the exact same thing. Good minds... (you know the rest)

[carton253]

Oh... did you not read my post before you blasted me.

For what it showed (and I wrote it did not show everything...) it was accurate to the book.

I acknowledged in my post that it left out the pre-war beginning...I acknowledged that Hancock suffered in the telling (good... because I like Jackson better)

I also said that choices had to be made when telling the story... a movie can't focus on everything...

If your 20-somethings didn't who Jackson was...they were not paying attention or too stupid to realize what they've seen. Don't blame that on the movie.