Hijacking my own thread even further, another relative was a U.S. Congressman for one term in the 1890s and was one of several southern politicians who fought and filibustered to block passage of veteran’s pensions. The pensions that the Civil War veterans got were pitiful- the maximum was around $25 per month (disable officers) while usually it was less- Harriet Tubman (first woman ever to lead troops into battle) received $8 per month (and that as the widow of a veteran because her own service claims were denied) though Hillary Clinton got that upped in 2003 [?!]) and while many moaned and lamented the fact and many states awarded pensions of their own not even the robber barons turned philanthropists had the resources to pay the pensions out of their own pocket. However, the southern politicians broke the backs of any attempt to majorly increase the amounts.
The reason was simple: the pensions were, of course, only granted to northern veterans (the CSA being both a separate country and defunct) and the already struggling southern states had to provide the pensions from their own coffers in addition to which as late as the Jazz Age they were still having to absorb medical costs associated with Civil War wounds. (Something like half the budget of Mississippi in one of the Reconstruction years went to buy prosthetic limbs for amputee veterans and similar devices.) Southern politicians, even the most liberal, were quite happy to be dead level damned and in hell before they’d let a penny of their tax dollars go to ease the life of a man who had burned and pillaged great-aunt Betty’s bodega 50 years before, and it’s really understandable just as it’s understandable why the U.S. Gov’t wouldn’t award pensions to traitors or rebels.
The state of Alabama stopped paying Confederate’s widow’s pensions in the 1960s when the last one supposedly died, but when Mrs. Alberta Martin was discovered alive and well they resumed in 1996, awarding her $2500 per month (100 x the amount Harriet Tubman got from state and federal pensions) for the remainder of her life. She married 81 year old veteran William Jasper Martin when she was a 21 year old single mother, had another son while married to him (paternity disputed) and married his granson a few weeks after the old man’s death in 1931. Her case received a lot of publicity and she became something of a folk hero. (Less famous is the fact she was a foul-mouthed old bitch who relished the attention she got and attended KKK and other rallies as the guest of honor.)
Hijacking the hijack - do you think, had Lincoln not been shot, that he’d have pushed for veteran’s benefits for CSA vets? It would be a very hard sell, but that never really stopped Lincoln before. Just wondering.
I dated one of these guys briefly (a Civil War reenactment guy…not a fat senator). When he found out I had dated a black guy, he started taking baths in Lysol. Uh, no…things didn’t work out too good for us.
But back to the Civil War films – sort of. In my tiny freshman class at college, about ninety people, the daughter of the director (or producer – I’ve forgotten) of North and South and the daughter of the director (or producer – see above) of The Blue and the Grey were assigned as roommates.
A vote for Gettysburg. Jeff Daniels as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlan is amazing.
I can’t understand why anyone would not like Sheen as Lee. I think he nailed the Lee as gentle grandfather general part exceptionally.
Glory is a close second.
I found Gods and Generals (the prequel to Gettysburg) to be rather boring.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly gets an honorable mention.
(I love the part where Blondie and Bucho are disguised as confederates and they see an approaching calvary column in gray appraching. Bucho gets their attention and they ride up. The calvary commander removes his gloves and starts dusting himself off, revealing the blue uniform underneath all the desert dust and sand.
Robert Duvall played Lee in Gods and Generals, but it was Stonewall Jackson who asks his slave to pray with him in that movie, wasn’t it?
In any event, I liked Gettysburg (in which Sheen played Lee; I think he was miscast) but I hate, hate, hated Gods and Generals. Just seemed like an extended piece of Confederate propaganda to me. The only two black characters are slaves who concede they wouldn’t mind being free, but are perfectly content to stand by Massa. And it’s ludicrous to think that (as the movie suggests), in late 1862, Stonewall Jackson favored freeing slaves who fought for the Confederacy. I’ve never read anything to suggest that (although Jackson did treat blacks well, including worshipping with them, which many white Southerners would never have done). When arming and freeing slaves was proposed by Gen. Patrick Cleburne later in the war, the Confederate War Department quashed his report, and Cleburne was killed in the Battle of Franklin late in '64. The first black regiments weren’t authorized until just a few months before the fall of the Confederacy, far too late to make a difference.
My favorite CW movie? Glory, hands down. Gettysburg would be a relatively close second - and Jeff Daniels should’ve gotten an Oscar for his portrayal of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, IMHO.
Glory absolutely 100% is my favorite CW movie of all time. It’s incredibly moving in a way no other movie on the subject has ever been. To me, anyway.
Gettysburg is a distant second. As noted above Jeff Daniels as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlan was great. But like others, Sheen’s Lee was just … off. He wasn’t bad, but there was just something that didn’t click for me. But even if his performance had been completely on target, the film would still come up second.
Meanwhile, where’s the love for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly?
I found Pharaoh’s Army in a $5 bin at WalMart and picked it up. It was quite good but small cast and no battle scene’s. Its about a Union captain (Chris Cooper) who leads 3 other soldiers on a foraging mission and a Confederate woman and boy they come accross.
Kris Kristofferson’s presense is marketed heavily but he actually has a very limited role so don’t watch it or avoid it because of him.
Gotta agree with both The General and Ride w/the Devil (both from the Reb perspective) as the cream of the crop.
Gettysburg I found bloated and long-winded, though Jeff Daniels is a miracle in that film; his storyline (which mostly ends halfway through the film, IIRC) saves the film. Glory is quite good but suffers from one of the worst cases of miscasting in any period film ever: Matthew Broderick’s terrible Robert Gould Shaw, which constantly threatens to scuttle a very well-made picture.
Ah, I should have specified. Also Africa has a LONG history of warrior women (the kentake’s, Njinga and her sisters, etc.) so she wasn’t the first black woman either, though she was the first black American narcoleptic to lead U.S. troops into battle.
What bothered me about Gods & Generals was that the FIRST FRAME of the movie was inaccurate. Lee (Robert Duvall) is on his way to be offered a Union generalship and, I suppose because they’re going for jarring, it’s the usual Lee (kindly white bearded man) in a blue Union officer’s uniform. In reality, at that time Lee was cleanshaven (save for a moustache) and his hair was still salt/pepper or dark- he didn’t grow the beard and go gray until after the war began. THEN, there’s a scene of Stonewall Jackson eating a meal sitting down- the man was notorious for his bordering-on-insane eccentricities, one of which was that he ate standing up (he had a special shelf in his dining room made for this), and it made him a far more likable and less-interesting character than he was (this was a man whose students tried to kill him they hated him so much and who lived with a sister he only communicated with through letters because they didn’t speak).
I’m glad somebody else thinks Matthew Broderick was by far the weakest link in Glory. He’s good in light comedy but he’s not a good dramatic actor at all- he was very 11th grade drama club VP in that I thought.
I remember Blue & Gray when it came out being a lot different than the usual fodder. I’ll have to check that one out.
The Lee of fact wasn’t, but the Lee of myth was. He was the reluctant warrior, who loved his country but loved Virginia more, the old man who wept as the soldiers under his command (his boys) died, etc. and all that.
