Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Civil War Drama Field of Lost Shoes Argues No Confederates Were Racist
The Village Voice ^ | Wednesday, Sep 24 2014 | By Nick Schager

Posted on 09/30/2014 12:29:23 PM PDT by 11th_VA

Rewriting history to egregious ends, Field of Lost Shoes recounts the true-life saga of seven Virginia Military Institute cadets who in 1864 died in service to the Confederate Army during the Battle of New Market.

Awash in phony-looking facial hair and clichéd period drama, Sean McNamara’s drama defines those brave boys via their love of black people, their embrace of Jews, and their desire to fight so that they might protect their homeland from “foreign invaders,” uphold their “traditions,” and preserve their “future.” Save for a brief prologue, there isn’t a pro-slavery Southern man to be found in this fantasyland vision of the Civil War, only kind-hearted, open-minded progressives who want to be with their love-at-first-sight gals, or pursue sculpting careers, or liberate their oppressed African American brethren.

That counterfeit romantic portrait is contrasted with the contemptuous depiction of Ulysses S. Grant (Tom Skerritt) as a “butcher” and the Union as a bunch of child-murderers led by a goofily mustached David Arquette.

(Excerpt) Read more at villagevoice.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: civilwar; dixie; vmi
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 161-162 next last
To: IronJack

Also remember, Sherman and Sheridan did the same trick to the American Indians. These two were war criminals with authority.


21 posted on 09/30/2014 1:20:25 PM PDT by DeWalt (Times are more like they used to be than they are today.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin
But his campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia was in your face, full frontal, war by attrition. Utilizing sheer force of numerical superiority by willingly trading the lives of his soldiers for those commanded by Lee. And he make no secret of it.

He also won. He latched on to Lee, forced him to retreat until he was bottled up in Petersburg. And then when Lee tried to break out in desperation, Grant tracked him down and forced him to surrender. I think that was the whole purpose behind the exercise, wasn't it?

22 posted on 09/30/2014 1:21:13 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Roman_War_Criminal
Don’t even bother discussing history with libs—they will always add or take away from what really happened. Once a liar, always a liar.

So...then this movie was made by liberals?

23 posted on 09/30/2014 1:23:23 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: 11th_VA

Most southerners did not own slaves. It was only the “crony capitalist” plantation owners who supported slavery.


24 posted on 09/30/2014 1:24:01 PM PDT by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Implementing class warfare by having no class.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: pierrem15

Once the Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered, Grant’s terms were not those of a cruel conqueror.

For example, any Confederate who claimed to own a horse or mule could take it home once paroled. Lee himself remarked that this “would have a happy effect” upon his army.


25 posted on 09/30/2014 1:25:46 PM PDT by elcid1970 ("In the modern world, Muslims are living fossils.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: RegulatorCountry
The truth of it is in the middle, as always. I do know that the Constitution being run over roughshod during that conflict led to the massive Federal overreach of today, and I suspect few would disagree with this assessment on Free Republic.

I think most would agree that it was Wilson, Roosevelt, and LBJ who made this government what it is today and not Lincoln. Two of those were Southerners by the way.

26 posted on 09/30/2014 1:30:22 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: 11th_VA

I guess you might say Confederates weren’t “racists” in their day. There wasn’t much by way of any concept of “racism” at that time. Even many abolitionists who felt that slavery should be abolished truly thought that blacks weren’t smart enough to compete in a white society and felt they were inferior. So, often times, in those days even the white people who were on the blacks’ side would today be considered racists.


27 posted on 09/30/2014 1:31:57 PM PDT by CWCoop
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

I have long argued that the War of 1861 was a transitional war in terms of strategy and tactics. It started out Napoleonic and ended up like World War I. General Lee was brilliant in terms of Napoleonic warfare while General Grant had more in common with General Pershing.


28 posted on 09/30/2014 1:34:37 PM PDT by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Implementing class warfare by having no class.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: 11th_VA

Not that we could have expected to see it, but of course there wasn’t a mention of the fact that the Confederates were Democrats fighting to keep Blacks on their plantation - hey come to think of it things haven’t changed very much. Today’s Democrats are doing the same thing.


29 posted on 09/30/2014 1:39:26 PM PDT by jmaroneps37 (Conservatism is truth. Liberalism is lies.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin
But his campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia was in your face, full frontal, war by attrition. Utilizing sheer force of numerical superiority by willingly trading the lives of his soldiers for those commanded by Lee. And he make no secret of it.

And in a war that had gone on for three years at that point, Grant took just seven weeks to put it into an endgame that left Lee trapped and able to do no more than delay the inevitable. And once that inevitability became apparent, who becomes the butcher then?

30 posted on 09/30/2014 1:42:06 PM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep ("The rat always knows when he's in with weasels"-- Tom Waits)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: DeWalt

They were hardly war criminals. They did their jobs with grim efficiency, that’s for sure. But that is the nature of war. There were predations enough on both sides, just as there was nobility. The South did not have any corner on that, romantic myths of chivalry notwithstanding.


31 posted on 09/30/2014 1:43:20 PM PDT by IronJack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: 11th_VA

Rah Virginia Mil!


32 posted on 09/30/2014 1:50:47 PM PDT by vmivol00 (I won't be reconstructed.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Roman_War_Criminal
Grant was a butcher

So was Pershing. So was Patton. So was Halsey. So was Curtis LeMay.

You win a war by slaughter, destruction, and terror that destroys the enemy's will to continue. That's why reasonable people do not start wars they do not have the stomach to finish. When we find our Grant, we will win the present war, and not before. It is unfortunate, but history requires it to not be otherwise.

33 posted on 09/30/2014 1:56:33 PM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: VerySadAmerican

Yep. And Lincoln advocated having all the slaves shipped back to Africa. His Emancipation Proclamation was just a war ploy to create a Fifth Column of blacks in the South. It didn’t free a single northern slave, and there were many. That didn’t happen till the end of the war.


34 posted on 09/30/2014 1:56:48 PM PDT by afsnco
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: 11th_VA

There was racism on all sides and throughout the country to including Lincoln himself. I fault no side for the racism of the day. Many of the feelings then also exist today.


35 posted on 09/30/2014 1:59:55 PM PDT by CodeToad (Islam should be outlawed and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 11th_VA

Now maybe the other side of the story will finally get told. While some southerners were certainly pro-slavery, it certainly wasn’t the driving issue for most, as about 70-80% of southern soldiers didn’t even own slaves. Some slaves and free blacks even served in the confederate army, many fighting for the same reasons that their white counterparts fought: to protect their homes from invaders who were pillaging and destroying. After the war, one Jewish confederate veteran, Moses Ezekiel (who was one of the VMI cadets at New Market) became a sculptor and included a black confederate marching in the ranks of the confederate army on the Confederate monument at Arlington.


36 posted on 09/30/2014 2:08:46 PM PDT by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: afsnco

I know right. His emancipation proclamation claimed to free blacks in southern states (over whom he had absolutely no control), and yet specifically stated that those in northern states would remain slaves. It was all about cloaking his cause in pretended righteousness so that Britain and France wouldn’t come in on the side of the South, like many southerners hoped.


37 posted on 09/30/2014 2:11:54 PM PDT by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: DeWalt

When you look at the way Sheridan and Sherman treated civilians in their paths,....all the burning, raping, pillaging and etc....it was awful. Southern civilians in the Civil War were treated way worse than Nazi German civilians in WWII...


38 posted on 09/30/2014 2:14:51 PM PDT by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
His emancipation proclamation claimed to free blacks in southern states (over whom he had absolutely no control), and yet specifically stated that those in northern states would remain slaves.

I call this the "Lincoln was a tyrant, so why didn't he act more tyrannically?" argument of Lost Causism. The Emanicpation Proclamation was issued in Lincoln's capacity as Commander in Chief, and only applied to areas in rebellion. For those slave states not in rebellion, Lincoln knew that he had no authority, something he repeatedly said. Those states would have to do it themselves (as several did) or that it would require a constitutional amendment, something he worked for but which was blocked by Democrats in the House until the election of 1864 gave Lincoln the needed majority. That's when a number of lame duck Dems switched their votes to allow the amendment to pass.

39 posted on 09/30/2014 2:27:51 PM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep ("The rat always knows when he's in with weasels"-- Tom Waits)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
After the war, one Jewish confederate veteran, Moses Ezekiel (who was one of the VMI cadets at New Market) became a sculptor and included a black confederate marching in the ranks of the confederate army on the Confederate monument at Arlington.

He also included a bare-breasted, sword-swinging warrior angel. Doesn't mean that there were large numbers of them on the battlefield.

40 posted on 09/30/2014 2:29:52 PM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep ("The rat always knows when he's in with weasels"-- Tom Waits)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 161-162 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson