Posted on 02/25/2003 8:48:35 AM PST by Cincinatus
Gods and Generals as history.
Writing in The New Republic several years ago about the movie Glory, James McPherson cited a 1995 New York Times article by Richard Bernstein entitled "Can Movies Teach History?" Bernstein noted that "more people are getting their history, or what they think is history, from the movies these days than from the standard history books." Then he asked: Does "the filmmaker, like the novelist, have license to use the material of history selectively and partially in the goal of entertaining, creating a good dramatic product, even forging what is the sometime called the poetic truth, a truth truer than the literal truth?" In other words, "does it matter if the details are wrong if the underlying meaning of events is accurate?"
The magnificent new movie Gods and Generals raises a related issue. Can the filmmaker adhere to the historical details and still miss the greater truth? Gods and Generals has the details down pat. Indeed, although the movie is based on the historical novel of the same name by Jeff Shaara, it seems clear that Ron Maxwell, the producer and director has consulted the appropriate scholarly works. For instance, every scene involving Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson in Gods and Generals can be found in James I. Robertson's definitive biography, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend. The attention to detail — the realistic battle scenes; the fidelity to the language of the time; the role of religious faith; the complicated nature of race relations in the south — is extraordinary. But does this attention to the details obscure a deeper truth?
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Books like those written by socialist newspaper writer Carl Sandburg and Clinton supporter James McPherson?
But books by commies like Edgar Lee Masters are OK? You've quoted him yourself at times, billbears, without being bothered that he was a bit, shall we say, pink?
Gee, billbears, I'm surprised that you don't bother to look into the past of people you agree with as much as you do people who don't agree with you. Something you and Tommy have in common.
Edgar Lee Masters was a committee member of the All-America Anti-Imperialst League in 1928. That organization had been founded in 1925 by the Communist Workers Party. It had an interesting 12 point platform, listed here . Since you can't distinguish between historical works and an author's political views, ala Sandburg and McPherson, then I have no doubt you would have the same reaction to 'Red Ed' Masters.
But Gods and Generals goes too far when it has Jackson telling Lewis in December of 1862 that some, including General Lee, advocate slaves as a condition of freedom. There is no evidence to support this assertion.
This assertion by Owens is simply not true. In fact, Lee wrote Richmond at length in a letter arguing for precisely the plan that Jackson described him to hold in the movie - emancipating the slaves and their families in exchange for service in the confederate army.
The purpose of this article, to spread the noble lie of a "good versus evil" view of the war, is stated in its conclusion:
"The Civil War was a moral drama. As Fredrick Douglass remarked, "there was a right and a wrong side in the late war that no sentiment ought to cause us to forget." Nor should we forget it as we watch Gods and Generals."
Such is likely a biproduct of Owens' Lincoln cultism, which denies the former president's glaring deficiencies on racial matters in exchange for a view developed wholly around a small set of carefully selected and rhetorically charged statements from an unrepresentative cross-section of his political speeches. In fact, persons with far greater claims to having a morally sound position on slavery denounced Lincoln's war as being waged on a false, corrupt, and immoral premise. Abolitionist Lysander Spooner argued a strong case that a war of liberation for the slaves would have been morally legitimate, but since Lincoln refused this cause for inferior and corrupt reasons, he invalidated any claim of moral legitimacy to his actions. As Spooner said it in a letter to Charles Sumner, "You have thus, to the extent of your ability, placed the North wholly in the wrong, and the South wholly in the right. And the effect of these false positions in which the North and the South have respectively been placed, not only with your consent, but, in part, by your exertions, has been to fill the land with blood."
Yet you label Sandburg and McPherson because of their political associations. The famous sothron double standard at work?
I'm mildly surprised that Marx wasn't a Davis supporter, what with all the government imposing policies of his. Still, I suppose there was that slavery thing that Marx just couldn't overcome. That's probably the reason.
BTW, I think I finally figured out why the confederate constitution did not require the president to swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend it. That's so Davis could trash it all he wanted and not be accused of breaking his word.
You really shouldn't be. Marx saw The Lincoln's war in terms of proletarian revolution. He believed The Lincoln was ushering in a new age of the worker.
Nah, I still think that it was because of the slavery thing.
But there is no evidence that Lee favored such a plan in December of 1862. His letter in the winter of 1865 makes it clear that his preference would not to use blacks for soldiers at all, but he views this as a last, desperate measure necessary to stave off defeat. There is absolutely no evidence that Jackson favored such a plan or promoted the end of slavery. And when all was said and done the southern leadership still couldn't bring themselves to offer freedom to slaves in exchange for service. They just conscripted them with no promises at all.
I'll have to research his writings further to confirm that, but I don't think it is at all out of the question in light of Lee's well known moral objections to slavery. His ethical position on the issue is known at least dating back to a letter in 1856. As for Jackson, he was known for his compassion towards slaves. I do not know if he favored an emancipation-by-service plan, but that is not even the issue in the movie - his remark is that Lee was one of the generals that favored such a plan.
No. Marx specifically stated that Lincoln was ushering in a new era for the working class - i.e. the road to communism.
Had Lincoln done as Spooner advocated in 1861, he would have lost all of the border states - and with them any chance of success in the war.
The hostile reaction in Kentucky and Missouri to Fremont's emancipation program in early 1861 makes that reality quite clear.
Emancipation as a main war aim would have to wait until after Antietam provided Lincoln sufficient security to venture it.
Generally I liked Gods and Generals. I liked how it attempted to convey southern officers as human beings rather than one-dimensional evil monsters.
To achive this, however, shadings like the Jackson-Lewis scene were not only unnecessary, they were gratuitous. It rang false - an almost desperate stretch to PC-ize an already complex and sympathetic personality.
While Lee did indeed hold little brief for slavery, there is little evidence that in late 1862 he held such a position as Jackson in the film ascribes to him - or would have made known to other officers in the army, given the likely disruptive effects it would have had in the army. And if he had, it strikes me as a false note that Jackson would have conveyed as much to Lewis in that setting.
Personal relations between whites and blacks in the slave era were certainly complex and even warm at points. Jackson certainly is a sterling example of the same, and this could have been conveyed without a jarring attempt to transform Lee and Jackson into abolitionists.
No, I don't think he would have. As it was, he lost Tennessee and Virginia anyway. Missouri and Maryland remained in, in large part due to Lincoln's use of arms to keep them in. So maybe Kentucky would have gone, but he would have probably used his military there too. Lincoln was heavily into the coerced obediance stuff and did not hesitate to turn loose the army when it suited him. In his rhetoric he asserted otherwise, but his actions speak for themselves.
I disagree at least with that particular scene. Others, probably. But the Jackson-Lewis scene where they were praying together is not at all far fetched. The historical Thomas Jackson prayed with the slaves, encouraged them toward Christianity, and worked extensively to educate them on the gospel. That he would pray along side Lewis in such a fashion as was depicted in the movie is not at all unheard of for him.
While Lee did indeed hold little brief for slavery, there is little evidence that in late 1862 he held such a position as Jackson in the film ascribes to him - or would have made known to other officers in the army
That may not necessarily be the case, especially with Jackson. Aside from having Lee's trust, Jackson views on the blacks were not as such that would cause a disruption upon hearing of that belief from Lee. In fact if Lee did hold that belief at the time, and if he were to tell anyone, my first bet is that Jackson would have been among them.
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