Lost on 'Cold Mountain': The anti-'Gods and Generals'. (Busting the Dixie myth.)

National Review ^ | January 7, 2004 | Mackubin Thomas Owens

[quidnunc]

2003 was a big year for Civil War movies. Gods and Generals, based on Jeff Shaara's novel of the same name hit theaters in the spring. Gods and Generals was a paean to the Old Confederacy, reflecting the "Lost Cause" interpretation of the war. This school of Civil War historiography received its name from an 1867 book by Edward A. Pollard, who wrote that defeat on the battlefield left the south with nothing but "the war of ideas."

I know from the Lost Cause school of the Civil War. I grew up in a Lost Cause household. I took it for gospel truth that the Civil War was a noble enterprise undertaken in defense of southern rights, not slavery, that accordingly the Confederates were the legitimate heirs of the American Revolutionaries and the spirit of '76, and that resistance to the Lincoln government was no different than the Revolutionary generation's resistance to the depredations of George III. The Lost Cause school was neatly summarized in an 1893 speech by a former Confederate officer, Col. Richard Henry Lee: "As a Confederate soldier and as a Virginian, I deny the charge [that the Confederates were rebels] and denounce it as a calumny. We were not rebels, we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes."

Cold Mountain, based on Charles Frazier's historical novel, was released on Christmas Day. It too is about the Civil War but Cold Mountain is a far cry from Gods and Generals. This is the "other war," one in which war has lost its nobility and those on the Confederate home front are in as much danger from other southerners as they are from Yankee marauders. Indeed, Cold Mountain can be viewed as the anti-Gods and Generals.

-snip-

[RobbyS]

Gangs of New York was not very historical, but it DID show that the poor people of New York was not for this war.

[buwaya]

Intereesting article. Obviously the lady is a Confederate sympathiser. I am not a native, which it seems to me one has to be to fully grasp this point of view, so I cannot agree with her.

Maybe my definition of PC differs - it seems more that the movies point of view was Northern, or anti-seccessionist. That is a very historical bias, not the modern PC.

Either way, barring the historicity of vicious home guards, it seems to me there were plenty of pacifists, the war-weary (desertion rates were incredible), ruined aristocrats, etc. for this to be plausible.

[Burkeman1]

Perhaps. But I was refering more to the Nicole Kidman character and the domestic front side of the picture. Being for war is not a "Conservative" trait at all (though some think war and conservatism are one in the same.)

[buwaya]

I took the movie to be something of a fairly low-key pacifist tract.

[PAR35]

If they never left the Union as the Unionists all claimed, then there was no reason to "re-apply".

And West Virginia does not legally exist. (See the Constitutional provisions for creating a new state from the territory of an existing state).

[Burkeman1]

"Gangs of New York"- while accurately portraying the violence, chaos, and Bossism of early New York was criminal in it's portrayal of the "Natives". The Irish were the ones who started the anti draft riots and did the killing of New Yorker Blacks. It was not "Bill the Butcher" and his protestant Natives (who were most likely Lincoln supporters in real life)- as shown in the movie. It was a cheap attempt to get American Irish to identify themselves as "minorities" as well.

[Burkeman1]

Haven't seen it yet myself- but I will- and then I can make a real solid judgement.

[what's up]

I have a more open mind lately about the southern cause as well.

However, knowing that the Democrat party which ruled the Senate and House for so long were largely products of the South gives me pause.

I need to know a lot more about the whole thing.

[Fifth Business]

She's wrong about the book also. It was not DOA. It was well-received and celebrated. She's also wrong about the characters being pacifists. The protagonist was disillusioned and tired of fighting.

Having said all that, I did not particularly enjoy the book, though the prose was excellent. The previews for the movie look pretty sappy, so I think I'll go see Master and Commander for the third time.

[buwaya]

I though leaving out the very significant race-riot aspects of the historical incident was both surprising and a disappointment. It would have made for a much more complex movie, one worth discussing.

[RLK]

We were not rebels, we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes."

--------------------------

But amongh those rights and priviles... was slavery.

It's a rhetoric trick in which a damand is sanitized by stating it in an more abstract and bland form.

[Burkeman1]

I agree- but they went PC- White Protestants being the ultimate in evil in the left wing racial category scale and thus had to be portrayed as the "nigger" hating racists while Irish Americans are given a pass because they too were treated badly by the evil WASP! How condescending! How 1984. As a 100% Irish American I took offense at that movie since I knew the true history.

[Little Ray]

At least we didn't have to turn cannons on draft rioters.

[Burkeman1]

The Dems from 1860 in no way resemble the Dems of 2004. But on the other hand the GOP- while radical in it's birth- has been far more consistent over the last 150 years than the Democrats ever were. There is a continuity. The GOP is less shameless and more prone to self examination than the Dems ever were or are.

[Little Bill]

As did the South whom they supported a good deal more fervantly.

[RLK]

Fifty percent of southen men refused to register for the draft. The war was described as a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight.

[Little Bill]

The war between the States in the South was between the lowlands and the high lands, from WVA to Northern ALA, kinda follows the mountians and present day voting patterns.

[Restorer]

And West Virginia does not legally exist. (See the Constitutional provisions for creating a new state from the territory of an existing state).

Au contraire.

The constitutional provisions were meticulously followed. The "legal" (according to the federal government) of Virginia voted its approval for the separation of West Virginia.

That the "legal" government was recognized by few Virginians outside West Virginia is not supposed to be noticed. :)

However, there were Virginians not from the western section who stayed loyal to the Union. A notable example was General George Thomas, one of the best Union generals. His property was confiscated in punishment for his "treason" by the VA state government. In retaliation, the Union confiscated Arlington from General Lee.

[Burkeman1]

You forget what motivated many Northern volunteers and truly undid the South's war effort. The Homestead act of 1862. Before this act almost every farmer west of the Appalachians were officially "squatters" on land "surveyed" and "claimed" by rich established families on the East Coast. George Washington was one of those who did the "surveying". And yet they de facto had control of the land but couldn't legally transfer it or sell it and have it recognized by the government or banks. Major problem for the far more numerous Northern white "squatters" than in the near feudal South.

The number one reason why the Mid Atlantic and and Mid West States sided with the Union and sacrificed many of their young- was for the land they were given to by Lincoln's Homestead Act.

[Happy2BMe]

HOW THE DEMOCRATS SEE THE SOUTHERN VOTE