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 ...
Your summation is about the best I have read at FR. You cover the tariffs which most people ignore. I would only add one thing. Lincoln had to wait for a Union victory before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. That document also had a diplomatic purpose to keep England and France out of the war. Lincoln needed Antietam so emancipation did not appear as an act of desperation.
It wasn’t meant to free what slaves remained in the northern states. Lincoln knew that would require an amendment to the constitution.
The staff of the Village Voice never met a communist they didn’t love; PC horse sh*t is the air they breathe.
the ANV’s biggest mistake is that they did not dedicate more marksmen , armed with Whitworth rifles , to reserve all shots for Yankee Generals . Sheridan and Custer would have been worthy targets for Mr. Whitworth’s creation .
Out west , Sherman should have never survived Vicksburg .
The March to the Sea was finished before the end of 1864.
Eeeeh, I don’t think so. Lee did not learn anything from Jackson until after he lost a third of his army at Gettysburg. After that, Grant new it was a simple matter of time and attrition. No brilliant tactics or fancy strategy required. Lee made him pay but Grant had the funds.
Blacks did serve in the Confederate Army. Not as many as in the Union army, but still a considerable number. Dr. Lewis Steiner, Chief Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission while observing Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson's occupation of Frederick, Maryland, in 1862:
"Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this number [Confederate troops]. These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only in cast-off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. These were shabby, but not shabbier or seedier than those worn by white men in the rebel ranks. Most of the Negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc.....and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army."
Here's a pic of black confederate pickets from the Northern paper Harper's Weekly:
Frederick Douglas said that:
"It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still."
These are all Northern sources. Go argue with them.
The Union would have been wise to adopt Grant's surrender terms without alteration.
Expecting wisdom of politicians is not wise ...
Ping.
Yup.
Glad you agree that it was basically a political stratagem that didn’t really do anything for blacks
Trench warfare was the future -- but apparently during the intervening 60 years, those Euros who saw it first hand were all gone by the time WWI rolled around.
But the Brits had a taste of it in the second Boer War and the Russians saw it at Plevna.
What you said. We will win the war against al-Quaeda, ISIS and all the other crazies by truly fighting it, not by engaging in endless half measures and staying on the defensive. I hope we will eventually have a commander in chief who knows this.
Here's what Frederick Douglass, in a speech that concedes every attack on Lincoln, said about the Emancipation Proclamation:
Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January, 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress.The Emancipation Proclamation may not have freed every slave instantly with a wave of Lincoln's imperial scepter. But it was the first major legal nail in slavery's coffin. Who cares that it had political benefits? Is a good deed less good for having been done in part for selfish reasons? Is a good deed less good if it only benefits some others and not all others?
Many soldiers on both sides were raging racists.
Not according to the people who commissioned the statue. Link
Really? Over half a million civilians were killed in the strategic bombing campaign. Hundreds of cities and towns were flattened. Hundreds of thousands more were killed fleeing the advancing Russian army. And you say the people in the Confederacy had it worse than that?
Most Southerners paid no tariffs either.
Sounds a lot more true to life than what you might find in a public school textbook endorsed by the NEA
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