I understand the practical reason for the Union to stop prisoner exchanges, described above.
And also its reason for magnimity towards the defeated Confederates: to prevent a protracted guerilla war.
And also the reason why Jeff Davis was finally allowed to jump bail: there was little chance of proving the illegality of secession.
But I don’t understand why, when at the beginning of the war, when Lincoln invited Lee over to the executive mansion to offer him command of the Union Army and Lee declined, Lee was allowed to leave the building alive.
(Can I use this as another proof that American actually are nicer?
Another anecdote for you history buffs is the Battle of Iwo Jima. The Marines knew that every Japanese soldier on the island was would fight to the death anyway, and there were no civilians; so why no save American lives and put the island under a cloud of poisonous gas? FDR orderd the plan stopped because it would be a “bad precedent.”)
Slithy, in the case of Iwo Jima, the use of poisonous gas was even then considered and out-and-out crime against humanity. Besides, they were afraif if THEY used gas, the Axis would start using it. Ironically, that was the Axis’s reason, too. Hitler didn’t want to use gas against the Allies because he was afraid they’d use it in response; Hitler, who had been gassed himself in WWI, was personally afraid of it. (Apparently he didn’t mind its use on innocent civilians, though.)
If FDR had up and said “use poison gas!” it’s pretty questionable that MacArthur/Nimitz et al. would have followed that order. Almost everyone had the time would have thought it a criminal act.
Well. Rarely have I seen a thread so thoroughly hijacked. To bring it back to the subject of the OP: I saw “Gods and Generals,” and agreed with the OP. (Except I didn’t even think the battle scenes were well done.) It seemed to me that no matter how intense the heat of battle, everyone had time to stop and deliver a melodramatic soliloquy about “the meaning of it all.” There was hardly a single scene where somebody didn’t invoke “The Almighty,” or pray, or “give thanks to God,” etc. If I’d been there for the events protrayed, I probably would’ve grabbed Jackson’s Bible and beat him senseless with it by the second reel.
As for “political correctness,” It is my opinion that no thoughtful person can take anything produced by Hollywood that portrays a historical event seriously. These movies are made to make money. They are NOT made to portray reality. For that, you have to read the long, boring books written by people with no agenda or financial incentive. They’re called historians.
Therefore, “political correctness” is really just a way of life for Hollywood. There is no real interest there in what is true, only what is acceptable, or better yet, popular. “Birth of a Nation,” made in 1915, was hugely popular in some circles, since it portrayed a resurgent South asserting it’s rights. Nowadays, it’s considered racist. Wasn’t it still racist in 1915? Well, it all depends on who you asked, then and now.
There’s no such thing as a historian without an agenda. Historians don’t just report history in a cut and dry manner they also interpret it. That’s why you have different versions of the same events depending on who you talk to.
Many people decried it as rascist when it was released.
Why do you assume every historian has an agenda? Isn’t that an overbroad statement that you cannot possibly support? And there are a lot of reasons for differing versions of events beyond having an “agenda.” People obviously see things in a colored (no pun intended) manner depending on their own attitudes and beliefs. But that doesn’t change the basic FACTS of what happened.
Consider the following two statements:
“The massacre of Rwandans in the 1990s was not widely noticed in the United States, and underreported by its national media.”
The massacre of Rwandans in the 1990s was not widely noticed in the United States, and underreported by its national media because the victims were poor black Africans nobody cared about."
Statement 1 is reporting what happened; it is a historical fact. Statement 2 is a political statement, giving an opinion in the guise of fact. In actuality, nobody can say for certain why the the Rwandan massacre was underreported. It is doubtful there is one simple reason for it.
And of course, any trial lawyer is familiar with how eyewitness accounts of a crime differ. Sometimes they differ so sharply that nobody can be sure exactly what they saw. This doesn’t reflect an “agenda” on anybody’s part, merely human nature.
**
Which doesn’t negate my basic point at all. A lot more people would probably call it racist now. Does that make it more racist than it was in 1915? The film hasn’t changed. We have.
“The meaning of a thing is not bound up in the thing itself, but in our manner towards it.”
No it’s not, and I think this illustrates the point exactly. “Underreported” is a value judgement, not a fact.
And this is exactly the sort of thing that historians need to be aware of. Are they reporting the facts, or are they offering an interpretation of the facts? Which facts are they elevating by reporting them, and which facts are they deeming inconsequential by not reporting them? What assumptions are they making which are not universal assumptions? Do they have a moral obligation to remove their own judgements from their historical account? Do they have a moral obligation to offer their own interpretation in the historical account?
These aren’t such easy questions as you might like them to be.
Not to endlessly nitpick, but “value judgement” is the wrong term. I’m not saying “underreporting” is good or bad, I’m stating it as a fact. To say something is “underreported” is not making a comment on the morality of underreporting. It is not a value judgement.
However, a case can be made that I am stating as a fact what is actually subjective. You can say that I am right or wrong for saying it thusly, but the real value judgement is in statement #2.
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I never said I thought it was easy, but I agree with your assessment of the job of historians.
I understand what you’re saying; I think you’re wrong.
Personally (says evilDaniel, purely for the sake of argument), I believe the massacre was overreported.
If saying that something is underreported is a factual statement, prove me wrong.
“Underreported” means that something was reported less than it should have been. “Should” means you’ve got a value judgement.
Unless you mean that the massacre was underreported inasmuch as the media reported an inaccurate (and low) number of deaths in the massacre. If that’s what you mean, I apologize for misunderstanding you: it’s your grammar, not your understanding of opinions vs. facts, that’s the problem.
Does it? Or does it mean that something was reported less than it could have been? Here’s an example: Even a casual comparison will tell you the 9/11 attacks received far more media coverage than the Rwanda massacre. Yet, at least 70 times as many Rwandans were killed. When you say the Rwandan attacks “should have” been reported more thoroughly, you are making an assumption about the people who did the reporting. You are assuming they didn’t report it because of a quantifiable motive. After all, if some act of God killed all satellite feeds from the African continent, you wouldn’t continue to say the media “should have” reported more on Rwanda, since the matter was out of their hands.
My point is, the same level of media technology (for the most part)was available during 9/11 as during Rwanda’s genocide. Yet it was utilized to a far greater extent in the former case. Exactly WHY that is so is the value judgement; call it racism, ethnocentrism, insularity, whatever, it doesn’t change the basic FACT that the American media simply didn’t cover that story as deeply as it could have. Ergo, it was underreported.
There is a difference between could have and should have. One is a value judgement. The other is not.
That’s a bizarre and unworkable definition. When I drove to work today, I was listening to NPR. Wanna know how many stories they had about Monica Lewinsky’s dress or OJ Simpson’s glove? Zero. Does that mean that both of those stories are underreported? I mean, after all, the NPR staff COULD have done yet another report on them.
By your definition, every story in the universe is underreported, because 100% of the reports in the media COULD be about that story, but they’re not.
Wanna try to refine the definition some? I’m guessing that eventually you see that there’s a value judgement in the definition, unless you restrict it only to numbers (e.g., “the number of deaths in Rwanda was underreported by the media.”)
The whole point of my comparison with 9/11 was to show that under- and over-reporting is relative. And you can only compare with events of a similar nature. OJ Simpson vs. Rwanda is simply not a fair comparison; it’s apples and oranges. Rwanda and 9/11 were both mass murders. Rwanda was on a far greater scale, yet it clearly didn’t receive the same level of coverage as 9/11. Is there really any debate about that?
Saying that they didn’t receive the same level of coverage – that’s a fact. But why not say that 9/11 was overreported?
Again, do you admit that your first definition (“something was reported less than it could have been”) is insufficient, since it means that every story is underreported? If so, how do you define the term both meaningfully and objectively?
I maintain that you cannot do so, unless you restrict the word’s meaning to the fallacious reporting of numbers.
Captain Amazing, I’m a bit confused. What does the order of Jefferson Davis regarding treatment of Benjamin Butler’s officers have to do with treatment of black prisoners of war?
I don’t mean to justify Davis’s order, but it doesn’t seem pertinent to the debate. Also, you have taken the order out of its historical context, which is misleading.
Benjamin Butler, as you may be aware, was the Union’s military governor of New Orleans and environs after that city was captured. He was regarded as a war criminal by Confederates for his harsh rule there. Davis went into this at some length in justification of his order. From the page you linked:
The highlighted language refers to Butler’s infamous “rape order” which essentially gave license to his troops to rape the women of New Orleans. Here it is:
It was Confederate policy to consider Union black soldiers, regardless of their backgrounds, as slaves (and in some cases this was correct…a lot of black Union soldiers in the Civil War were escaped slaves. So, black soldiers would be treated as “negro slaves captured in arms”, as would their white commissioned officers, and, of course, the penalty for slave insurrection was death. Because of the execution or enslavement of black POWs, in July of 1863, Lincoln issued his “retaliation order”, saying:
And I disagree with you in calling Butler’s order a “rape order”. Its intention wasn’t to justify rape, but because the women of New Orleans were doing things like spitting on soldiers’ uniforms. (One woman dumped a chamber pot on Farragut’s head) So, Butler passed the order with the idea, “If you’re going to show no class by insulting United States soldiers, you’re going to be considered a prostitute.”
As he put it in his letter to the Mayor of New Orleans:
Ah, yes. Don’t know how I missed that passage from your previous post. Guess I was focused on the language of the first two paragraphs. My mistake. (Is there any evidence any black soldiers were actually executed under that order, by the way?)
Regarding Butler’s order, we’ll have to agree to disagree. What do you think it means for a woman to be treated as a prostitute? Who do you suppose made the determination whether a woman “by gesture, look, or word insults” was showing “contempt for…officers and soldiers”? Pretty vague language, after all. Do you suppose a jury was convened?
Don’t be naive, CA. Butler’s coyness notwithstanding, the order was intended (and understood) as a license to rape. Do you really mean to condone Butler’s action? Would you condone a similar order in Iraq?
Butler was a war criminal, IMO. Unprosecuted, of course.
Captain Amazing, that order looks to me like it’s saying, “If a woman insults you, she’s a whore, which means it’s okay to fuck her, so go ahead and fuck her.” Given that the order gives that permission without regard to whether the woman consents, how can it be considered anything other than a rape order? It seems to be to be depraved, sadistic, and evil.
Well, in addition to what may or may not have happened at Ft. Pillow, the wounded and captured 1st Kansas Colored Infantry were executed at Poison Spring, Arkansas. I believe captured prisoners belonging to the 5th US Colored Regiment were executed after the Battle of Olustee. There was a massacre of black troops after the Battle of Plymouth, NC. There was also one after the Battle of Saltville. If you were a black Union soldier, it was just generally unhealthy to fall into Confederate hands.
Cappy: You forgot the massacre after the battle of the Crater.
DanielWithrow: I don’t know if your interpretation stands. When he was confronted by angry Southrons, according to Fletcher Pratt’s Ordeal by Fire, Butler scathingly replied he had taken the order almost word for word from an earlier London city ordinance. I doubt that the Brits condoned rape.
The massacres you mention don’t appear to have been executions carried out in response to Davis’s directive though. They appear to be the actions of individual military units. (Recall that Davis’s order required the captured soldiers to be turned over to state authorities.)
I think Davis was making a political point with his order, issuing it in response to Butler’s outrageous (or perceived as such) conduct in New Orleans. (You issue an outrageous order calling for our women to be treated as whores? Fine. We’ll enter an order calling for your officers, and black troops while we’re at it, to be executed when captured.) I’m not sure the order was ever intended to be actually implemented. Maybe I’m wrong. That’s why I’m trying to find out if the order was ever actually carried out. Were any of Butler’s officers executed, for example?
