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 ...
Most northerners paid no tariffs. That is because foreign manufactured goods were so expensive because of tariffs, very few were sold north or south. Are you sure you understand the issue?
There are very few movies that don't painfully wedge a piece of sharp ignorance from their point of view into a story. It generally seems like a non-sequitur.
*camera zooms in too a sad mother and the next door neighbor*
-somber music-
“My son is dying”
“Yes, I know”
“He has a rare tropical disease, and Bush was the worst president ever!”
“Yes, he was. Too bad we didn't behead him, what was that about your son?”
Not trying to argue, but I’m not of the school that thinks it’s best to waste good soldiers so long as the job is done.
Custer....and Napoleon....and Marcus Licinius Crassus....all were of that school. They are losers historically. To be fair I’d say Lee butchered his men also in several battles.
Grant did get the job done, but it cost way more than it should have. You win wars by slaughtering your enemies not your own (Patton paraphrase).
The next war will cost tens of millions of lives (if not hundreds of millions).
There was a lot of chauvinism to the European observers. “Yes, that may be how these American amateurs fight, but it has little to do with us professionals.”
I agree, but the fault lies not with Grant, but with McClellan, who could have ended the war smarter in late 1863, rather than dithering until Grant had to respond to a rebounded ANV in late 1864.
P.S. The reason Custer, Napoleon, and Crassus--and I would include Darius in Greece, and Hitler at Stalingrad to the list--were losers was because they were the aggressors, meaning they started the war, and aggressors are successful when they follow Sun Tsu's tactics, rather than simply pushing pedal to the metal and hoping for the best. Defenders, OTOH, have to slaughter-and-burn the aggressors, so that the aggressors decide it isn't worth it anymore and either surrender or go home, which is essentially the same thing.
Yes. Do you?
Grant’s casualties in the first attack at Cold Harbor were 37% of the assaulting forces. Lees casualties attacking Cemetery Ridge (Picket’s Charge)were 49% of assaulting forces. Who is the butcher?
True.
Prussian General Von Moltke said, “I have no time to waste in studying the struggles of two armed mobs.”
With liberals history always began five minutes before any discussion of it.
Legal nail in the coffin? It had no real legal basis. It was about as legal as some of Obama’s dubious executive orders. Slavery didn’t legally end until the 13th amendment was passed after the war.
If Southerners main concern was the new tariff they would have stayed in the union to keep tariff rates low.
And of course, most of the eventual rise in tariffs was accepted as a way of paying for the war.
But the point, I think, was more that if you were too poor to own slaves, you were too poor to have many foreign manufactured goods -- let alone luxury items -- and too poor for tariffs to make much of a difference to your way of life.
Backwoodsmen and poor whites and even ordinary farmers weren't that agitated about tariff rates.
It was people who were already relatively well to do who worried about tariffs and they worried far, far more about abolitionists and slave uprisings.
It was a military measure issued as commander in chief, and legal under that power. And as I said, two years later, slavery was gone. Was Frederick Douglass wrong in seeing it as an important symbolic first step in that direction?
Slavery didn’t legally end until the 13th amendment was passed after the war.
How did that happen?
Now can you imagine our troops in WWII Europe marching through Germany, burning down most of the houses and barns as they went along, raping all the pretty German women they saw, shooting the cattle, stealing all the valuables and generally laughing about the whole thing? While I'm sure isolated instances of this may have occurred, this was not the norm. Yet that is what northern troops did while in the South. And when Germany capitulated, we helped them out with the Marshall plan to rebuild their economy, and even dropped candy to their kids from airplanes. But when the south capitulated, we got reconstruction, martial law and instead of helping to rebuild our economy we were given heavy taxes that kept the south down economically for years.
Black Southerners in Confederate Armies: A collection of historical accounts
Virginia's Black Confederates: Essays and Rosters of Civil War Virginia's Black Confederates
You would be surprised at the number of body servants who actually grabbed guns and joined the fight once the battle began. There are many historical accounts of this.
Depending on who's figures you go with OUR soldiers and the British soldiers killed upwards of 625,000 German civilians during the bombing of their cities.
While I'm sure isolated instances of this may have occurred, this was not the norm. Yet that is what northern troops did while in the South.
And that is ridiculous.
That would make a perfect motto for Hitler or Stalin. War is always bad, but some people just love to make it crueler, like Sherman did.
And historical fact that legally there were no Black Confederate combat soldiers until March 1865.
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