Posted on 02/17/2003 10:41:15 AM PST by stainlessbanner
Director says 'Gods' has Southern slant, but 'full humanity'
The North may have won the Civil War, but in Hollywood, the South reigns triumphant.
That was certainly true in 1915, when D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation portrayed the conflict as a war of Northern aggression where order was restored only by the arrival of the Ku Klux Klan. It was true in 1939, when Gone With the Wind looked back on the antebellum South as an unrivalled period of grace and beauty never to be seen again. It was true when Clint Eastwood played The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), a Confederate war veteran who has run afoul of Northern "justice."
(Excerpt) Read more at sunspot.net ...
The compromise proposals were all generally constitutional amendment issues. Tariffs were a legislative issue, and when the Morrill tariff went up for debate the southern senators tried repeatedly to amend it. Their amendments were shot down one after another.
Thomas Letcher detailed 6 conditions that had to be met to avoid Virginia secession.
Yeah, and Sen. Robert Hunter of Virginia cited the Morrill tariff as an example to history of what the North would do to the South when it alone controlled the government. It would therefore seem that these two men differed on their conditions for their home state. It would also seem that Mason, who was a chief backer of Hunter during the tariff debate, shared in Hunter's position about Virginia.
If tariffs were the major sticking point then why didn't the southern senators address them?
They did. Robert Hunter of Virginia spoke for 7 pages in the congressional record in one speech alone against the tariff. James Mason of Virginia, Robert Johnson of Arkansas, and Thomas Clingman and Thomas Bragg of North Carolina backed Hunter repeatedly in the Senate. Louis Wigfall of Texas denounced it while speaking in favor of secession before the Senate. Robert Toombs of Georgia denounced it back in his home state while making the case for secession there.
In net economic losses caused by protectionism, they did. This has been shown many times.
I have experienced this in searching records in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Fortunately, my daddy's side was rooted in a county in Kentucky that escaped many of the burnings so I have found a wealth of information centered there.
Then why the slavery side-show? If the south was bound and determined to leave because of the tariff, why waste time with the slavery non-issue? On the other hand, if tairffs were such an issue what prevented the southern politicians from submitting Constitutional amendments to address their grievances? Since they were in an amending mood they why not toss in one that would have settled the tariff issue once and for all? It tariffs were such a big concern, that is.
They did.
But not a single one of them offered a compromise proposal to address them? Didn't they care? Didn't Davis and Toombs and Letcher care about tariffs?
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
Oh, I give you what you ask for and you change your question.
"You criticize him for believing that whites were superior to blacks"
I don't believe I criticized him in my post at all.
"Those few free blacks that were around they wanted anywhere except where the white planters were..."
Which ones told you that? The three thousand or so free blacks that owned black slaves?
"So you tell me, as bad as you claim Lincoln's beliefs were how can they help but be better than any southern leader?"
This has always been the gist of your arguments. No matter how bad Northern leaders were the Southern leaders were worse. And you play the game by posting some obscure quote that in your narrow vision defines a culture. Okay, I will tell you by playing your simple game:
"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states."
Charles Dickens, 1862.
Lol! -Would you some like fries with that whopper?
Louisiana Secretary of State--Election Results by Parish
Your whining about blacks not voting Republican in New Orleans proves you don't know jack bout Louisiana politics. Try putting some of that hot sauce on Rep. John Cooksey and Gov. Mike Foster and stop pointing fingers at groups that would never vote Republican in a million years.
Landrieu won by 40,000 votes, and Dixie let a bunch of womens studies lesbo types from the northeast decide their election for em.
Thanks Dixie, for electing that cute little fillibuster Mary Landrieu!!
I guess it's a moot point, as slavery was available.
(yawn)
You've done nothing of the sort. I've asked you for a quote from any southern leader, military or civilian, which indicates that their view of blacks was more liberal or more enlightened than President Lincoln's. Let me make it easier for you. Here is a quote from the first Lincoln-Douglas debate:
There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.
So let's simplify it. How about a quote from any southern leader which hinted that the black man was his equal in any way. Any way at all.
Which ones told you that? The three thousand or so free blacks that owned black slaves?
No, I think Jefferson Davis would be enough. He was the one who said, "We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Law in nature tells us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude. Freedom only injures the slave. The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change. You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables him to be." Can't get more succinct than that, can you?
This has always been the gist of your arguments. No matter how bad Northern leaders were the Southern leaders were worse.
No, the gist of my arguement is the sheer, bloody hypocricy of all you sothron types who label Lincoln as a racist, and ignore the fact that your own leadership was worse.
Nonsense. They imported next to nothing. They consumed very little in the way of manufactured goods. They grew wealthy through their exports and there was nothing that the tariff did to hinder that. They bragged that their lack of manufacturing and industry and finance protected them from the economic downturns of the time.
That would be the Alabama Dickens' I assume?
...But Landrieu also took other lessons from the Republican victories on Nov. 5. Chief among them was the importance of devising some message, strategy or issue that would offset the president's formidable personal popularity with a local issue that played to the Democrats' advantage. In Landrieu's case, the issue was sugar. The day after Bush's campaign visit to the state last Tuesday, Landrieu's campaign began airing an ad charging that the White House had struck a "secret deal" to double Mexican sugar imports to the United States. The imports would hurt Louisiana's 27,000 sugar farmers and the state's $1.7 billion sugar industry.
The ad hung on a slender thread of evidence: a single, unsourced article in the Mexican newspaper Reforma. The White House denied the existence of any such "deal" to flood the United States with cheap Mexican sugar. Nonetheless, the point seemed to hit home, dovetailing with Landrieu's message that she would put "Louisiana first" while Terrell -- by now appearing in television ads side by side with the president -- would be a rubber stamp for the administration who would disregard the state's interests.
Must have been all those black sugar farmers Landrieu was appealing to, cause we know that in the 'heart' of the confederacy that the conservative white farmers are all free-traders, right?
Now there you go again. One quote is worth a thousand civilians. You obviously are a man of little depth because, to you, a single quote defines a whole people. Maybe you should reach out and touch someone. Do you live in a closet? I'm sure if I had the time and inclination I could find some quote buried in the archives of my local courthouse that would answer your ridiculous question but why bother? You will simply find another one. Lincoln enlightened? Please. He was a politician along the lines of Lyndon Johnson (" I just delivered the black vote to democrats for the next twenty years") who eventually used slavery to garner sympathy in some quarters toward his war effort. He was no friend of the black race and used them and their plight to win the war.
"No, I think Jefferson Davis would be enough. He was the one who said, "We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Law in nature tells us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude. Freedom only injures the slave. The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change. You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables him to be." Can't get more succinct than that, can you?"
This is your way of comparing two men. Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln. They were politicians using rhetoric to further their causes. No doubt that most Southern leaders were of a like mind. No doubt that most Northern leaders were of a like mind. Remember, history is written by the winners. But in the case of the U.S. Civil War there were no winners. The U.S.A. became a socialist society. Slaves were freed but sent into a life of "root hog or die" and prevented from root-hogging. It's very convenient for you insufferable northerners to stick your noses in the air and tut-tut us ignorant Southerners. The truth is northerners had a fear and hatred of blacks while Southerners had an appreciation and closeness but an air of superiority. Neither is justified but the latter is at least communicable.
"No, the gist of my arguement is the sheer, bloody hypocricy of all you sothron types who label Lincoln as a racist, and ignore the fact that your own leadership was worse."
Labeling Lincoln a racist is a statement of fact. Give me ONE example of any of us ignoring the racist past of the South. You sir are guilty of ignoring your own racist past or, at least, being totally igorant of it which is more likely.
Abbreviationsa like LOL or ROFL won't do it here. I have convulsed, I was in fear for my life. You accusing someone else of "endless repetition of the same statements"!
Okay, let me agree with you that Lincoln was a nice racist for the sake of argument. For some reason your friend Walt flings out the racist card at the slightest paranoid hint of his to others who he thinks that may be racist, and yet he defends Lincoln, and for what he said, which is far worse than anything that anybody has said here.
Now could we carry on the same logic with mass murderers? Hitler was actually the nicest mass murderer as compared to Mao and Stalin. Surly you have have no qualms about anybody espousing such beliefs here about that, would you?
I suppose the racist insane asylum you guys are from has more priority over the murderer insane asylum that is yet to come, right? I hope you feel a sense of accomplishment that you are paving the way for just that.
Sorry I rattled your cage.
Blue, like yours. You should look at it sometime. It's pretty obvious.
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