Posted on 11/29/2002 7:57:37 AM PST by End The Hypocrisy
Three MAJOR civil war cinema epics are due in 2003. 1) Robert Duvall plays Robert E. Lee in Gods & Generals, out Feb. 21; 2) Jude Law portrays a jaded confederate in Cold Mountain, due Dec. 25, 2003; and 3) Tom Cruise plays a Civil War veteran who witnesses the end of a Japanese culture in The Last Samurai, due Dec. 12, 2003. Gods & Generals is replete with special effects, although director Maxwell still used more than 10,000 extras to re-create battle scenes.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
This was done solely to protect the interest of those who already had slaves. They didn't want a glut of slaves to drive down the price of -their- slaves. It was the most selfish reason imaginable.
It's just what you'd expect from people who wanted to get their bread from the sweat of another man's brow.
Walt
I blieve it would depend on outside influence and how the confederacy would react to it. For most slave owners it was a convenience issue more than an ecomomic one. Every one looks at the large plantations with their dozens of slaves and forgets that most slave owners in the south didn't have massive plantations. Most slave owners had a few slaves and a considerable percentage of those used slaves as household help. Where were the replacements for the cooks and nannys and maids to come from? Without outside influence the use of slaves as household help could have continued for decades into the 20th century.
There is also something called the Missouri Constitution and other things called 'biographies' where it is shown that the Kennedy boys are wrong.
Facts first. For a brief period in 1858-9, Grant was the owner of a 35 year old mulatto man named William Jones. The details surrounding the ownership of Jones are still murky, it appears that he was a gift from Grant's father-in-law since Grant himself hadn't the money to buy a slave. There is a leter that Grant wrote to his father on March 21, 1858, in which he says, "I have now three Negro men, two hired by the year and one of Mr. Dent's." On October 1, 1858 Grant wrote again to his father: "Mr. Dent thinks I had better take the boy he has given Julia along with me, and let him learn the farrier's business. He is a very smart, active boy, capable of making anything, but this matter I will leave entirely to you. I can leave him here and get about three dollars per month for him now, and more as he gets older." Regardless of how Grant came to own Jones, Grant freed him on March 29, 1859, though he could have sold him for approximately $1,000. At this time Grant was in significant financial straits and heavily in debt, but was unwilling to sell another human being.
As for Mrs. Grant, for periods in her life, Julia Dent Grant had the use of four slaves, Eliza, Dan, Julia and John. Whether she held title to them or her father retained ownership is unclear, but it is more likely that her father retained title. Had she owned the slaves then under the laws of the time her property would have been transferred to her husband, and Grant showed his feeling toward slave ownership. Regardless, with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Julia's four slaves were set free by the Dent family. It is claimed in the footnotes of her Memoirs that they were not freed until December, 1865, with the passage of the Thirteenth amendment, but this doesn't concur with other primary sources of the period and Missouri's slaves were freed in January, 1865. Grant himself noted that on a visit to White Haven in 1863, Julia's slaves had already scattered and were no longer on the plantation. On extended visits to Petersburg, in 1864, Julia brought along a hired German girl to tend to 6 year old Jesse. Why would she have done that if she still had her slaves?
There are other southron types who claim Grant owned slaves for a period of years after the war. You, at least, only claim he owned them until December 1865. Even that claim would be impossible. As of January 1865 every state in the North except Kentucky and Delaware had amended their state Constitutions to end slavery. Grant didn't live anywhere where slave ownership was legal. How could he have continued to own them?
The quote 'Good help is hard to find" that is attributed to Grant is complete and utter bullsh*t. I have yet to find that anywhere in his writings and nobody has been able to tell me when he is supposed to have said it or to whom. I doubt you will have any better luck.
Huh? You sound insecure. Anyhow it seems we are both in agreement then. The Confederate Flag is the flag of slavery. Historical fact. You go on to say you don't think slavery was so bad, yada yada yada. That's maybe interesting to somebody (anybody?) but irrelevant. The Confederate Flag is the flag of slavery. We seem to both agree. Case settled.
In what way? Did they have a 2nd cousin who owned slaves? Did a Great Uncle or Aunt have an in law who owned them? I have seen this 1/3 figure posted, and I think it is bogus. By the same criterea, I could prove that 1/3 of Americans belonged to the SS in WW2.
Just those who are members of The Religion of Peace.
True, but it's also true that many or most Northerners were still farmers. Large areas of the North were still predominantly agricultural. The kind of agriculture -- slave or free, plantation or family smallholder, for the international or the domestic market -- that was practiced mattered a lot.
The idea that the war pitted orthodox Christian Southerners against atheistic or materialistic or unitarian Northerners is also a little too pat. There were devout Christians on both sides. And there were blindspots in the piety of those on both sides. It's certainly true that Southerners didn't stray as far from orthodox concepts as the New England Transcendentalists, but a major reason for that was that they felt they had to be on the defensive about their way of life, which very much included slavery. And that defense of the antebellum way of life also reshaped what Christianity was, as Northern reform efforts did, so I wouldn't credit one side as being truly Christian.
Except for a brief period around the war of 1812, South Carolinians may always have put state above country. Virginians had been quite nationalistic for a longer period. Certainly when Virginians were President there was strong American nationalist sentiment in Virginia. This waned in later years, particularly as slavery become a more important issue. But even in 1860 and up to the beginning of war at Fort Sumter, unionist sentiment was strong enough in Virginia to hinder and delay secession attempts.
Most Civil War Virginians put their state above the United States. An earlier generation of Virginians, North Carolinians, and Tennesseans, moving westward across the country, were more open to the national idea. The shift from agriculture to industry played a role in changing their minds, as did the fact that Virginia and Tennessee lagged behind Northern states in the development of those industries. The bitter sectional conflicts over slavery can't be ignored, though.
Not sure of Duval's politics, but he's probably one of the greatest actors of our generation. I am sure he will give an excellent performance.
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It is curious that while heretical Northerners like Emerson and Thoreau were dabbling in Indian philosophy, their Southern contemporaries, all the while maintaining their Christian orthodoxy, recreated Indian views of caste and dharma.
"The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South . . . This war is the servant of slavery." -- Methodist Rev. John T. Wightman, preaching at Yorkville, South Carolina [The Glory of God, the Defence of the South (1861), cited in Eugene Genovese's Consuming Fire (1998).]
You have mastered the irrelevant -- but all your sloshing around in other areas does not rescue you from the fact that by its own choosing, the Confederacy made the Confederate Flag the flag of slavery.
The ends justifies the means, is that it? I figured you would work that in somewhere. And you call me a commie. Still Davis ignored his constitution, nationalized industry, appropriated private property, jailed dissidents, closed papers, and supported slavery besides. I doubt that those qualify as "founder's dreams" - unless the founder in question is Lenin.
By the way, check out post 198 to see the flag of "hate" in full parade.
There are some pictures from more recent events in post 171.
"All these deaths of U.S. citizens --the death of EVERY U.S. citizen killed by Arab terror in the United States, can be laid directly at the feet of George Bush I." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=452#448
"I'll say again that based on what I knew in 1992, I would vote for Bill Clinton ten times out of ten before I would vote for George Bush Sr." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?q=1&&page=401#420
"As you doubtless know, the separation of powers in that Pact with the Devil we call our Constitution, gives only Congress the right to raise and spend money." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=432#432
"Nationalism and socialism are opposites." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=570#516
"First of all, the AJC [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] is -not- an "ultra-leftist" newspaper, and you know it." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/13/02
SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/784464/posts?page=70#70
"I feel that admiration for Reagan has rightly diminished over time, and rightly so." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=432#432
"I don't retract any of that." - WhiskeyPapa in reference to the liberal statements found above, 11/26/02
SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/796067/posts?page=146#146
I have not mastered you yet nor am I sure I wish to.
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