Reuters "making" the news...

[Tigermike 3,710]

I have argued long and hard with TigerAl on this board, but this is one we have no disagreement with.

To say the Civil War and slavery are not connected is like saying that the Iraqi War was not connected to terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

To say the Civil War and slavery are not connected is like saying that the Iraqi War was not connected to terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

You will never get Al to admit or agree with that.

[CCTAU 3,536]

To say the Civil War and slavery are not connected is like saying that the Iraqi War was not connected to terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Saying the Civil War was only about slavery is also incorrect, it is more complicated than that, just like saying the Iraqi War was only about freeing the Iraqis and stopping the filling of the mass graves.

That is what I'm trying to say. There were more issues than just slavery. But to hear AL, that's all it was. I'm just tired of everything dealing with the civil war always being about blacks and racism. Like one guy said already, there were slaves of all different colors.

HAD THE SOUTH WON, SLAVERY WOULD STILL BE GONE TODAY! It was becoming economically unfeasible.

But you can see from the documents and historical archives of the US that slavery was not the MAIN issue.

[Tiger Al 0]

Keep reading the revised version of history and pretty soon you too will be all aboard for slave reparations.

It's interesting how you framed this response. By connecting the idea of reparations to a discussion about slavery as a primary cause for the civil war, you've attempted to corner everyone into the assumption that if they believe that slavery WAS the primary cause of the civil war then they must also believe that reparations ARE warranted. This connection then brings to mind people like Jesse Jackson and the NAACP in the hope that that will nullify any objection to your reasonings. You've underestimated my intellect as well as, I believe, most of the other posters on this board.

The people you quote repesented only about 10% of the population of the south. You act like everybody had a slave.

No, I don't. As a matter of fact, more people owned slaves than I originally thought. This article, which derives most of its information from the census taken in 1860, shows numbers much higher than I'd imagined. I figured, in the south, that the number would be around 10-15%, but, as you'll see, it went as high as almost 50% in some states.

Selected Statistics on Slavery in the United States

(unless otherwise noted, all data is as of the 1860 census)

Total number of slaves in the Lower South : 2,312,352 (47% of total population).

Total number of slaves in the Upper South: 1,208758 (29% of total population).

Total number of slaves in the Border States: 432,586 (13% of total population).

Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves. In Mississippi and South Carolina it approached one half. The total number of slave owners was 385,000 (including, in Louisiana, some free Negroes). As for the number of slaves owned by each master, 88% held fewer than twenty, and nearly 50% held fewer than five. (A complete table on slave-owning percentages is given at the bottom of this page.)

For comparison's sake, let it be noted that in the 1950's, only 2% of American families owned corporation stocks equal in value to the 1860 value of a single slave. Thus, slave ownership was much more widespread in the South than corporate investment was in 1950's America.

On a typical plantation (more than 20 slaves) the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and implements.

Slavery was profitable, although a large part of the profit was in the increased value of the slaves themselves. With only 30% of the nation's (free) population, the South had 60% of the "wealthiest men." The 1860 per capita income in the South was $3,978; in the North it was $2,040.

Selected Bibliography

Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson

Ordeal by Fire, by James McPherson

The Confederate Nation, by Emory Thomas

Civil War Day by Day, by E.B. Long

Ordeal of the Union (8 vols.) by Allan Nevins

Reader's Companion to American History, by Eric Foner and John Garrity

Census data can be appealed to in order to determine the extent of slave ownership in each of the states that allowed it in 1860. The figures given here are the percentage of slave-owning families as a fraction of total free households in the state. The data was taken from a census archive site at the University of Virginia.

Mississippi: 49%

South Carolina: 46%

Georgia: 37%

Alabama: 35%

Florida: 34%

Louisiana: 29%

Texas: 28%

North Carolina: 28%

Virginia: 26%

Tennessee: 25%

Kentucky: 23%

Arkansas: 20%

Missouri: 13%

Maryland: 12%

Delaware: 3%

In the Lower South (SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, FL -- those states that seceded first), about 36.7% of the white families owned slaves. In the Middle South (VA, NC, TN, AR -- those states that seceded only after Fort Sumter was fired on) the percentage is around 25.3%, and the total for the two combined regions -- which is what most folks think of as the Confederacy -- is 30.8%. In the Border States (DE, MD, KY, MO -- those slave states that did not secede) the percentage of slave-ownership was 15.9%, and the total throughout the slave states was almost exactly 26%.

So Lincoln didn't sign that proclamation before secession, huh?

There's two reasons why this doesn't matter: First, and most importantly, neither Lincoln nor any president can unilaterally amend the constitution. Second, states had already seceded before he ever took office.

For you people always looking for a victim, there will always be slavery.

And for you people always looking to excuse oppression, African slaves will always be willing participants of a 'broader view.'

[CCTAU 3,536]

Here is where your false view of history has gotten us:

Don't watch Cold Mountain

Actor urges 'Cold Mountain' boycott, claims slavery ignored

By BOB LONGINO

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When Oscar nominations are announced this morning, the popular Civil War romance-drama "Cold Mountain" is expected to be competing for multiple awards.

If Miramax Films' 155-minute epic, starring Hollywood heavyweights Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renée Zellweger and based on Charles Frazier's National Book Award-winning novel, gets a best picture nod, it will surely make aggressive studio chief Harvey Weinstein happy. But some moviegoers who saw "Cold Mountain" won't be smiling.

Erik Todd Dellums, an African-American actor from Washington who has appeared on TV shows such as "Homicide: Life on the Street" and in films like "Doctor Dolittle" with Eddie Murphy, is calling on moviegoers to boycott "Cold Mountain," claiming it's a Civil War film that fails to address the issue of slavery.

"This has less to do with 'Cold Mountain' per se than Hollywood missing another prime opportunity to tell some truth," Dellums said recently by phone from Birmingham, where he's making the indie horror film "Camp D.O.A."

Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle published Dellums' anti-"Cold Mountain" message, and his opinion piece has since appeared on various Internet sites.

Calling the film "a sham, a slap in the face of African-Americans," Dellums wrote that "Cold Mountain" "plays like 'Saving Private Ryan,' another Hollywood epic in which black contributions to history -- namely the Battle of Normandy -- are left out." (The full text of Dellums' statement can be found at www.commondreams.org/views04/0104-06.htm.)

Dellums is not alone. In an opinion piece headlined "A cold, white mountain" in Raleigh's The News & Observer, staff writer Barry Saunders wrote that "all during the movie, I ruminated on our absence from it, even though the main backdrop -- the Civil War -- was ostensibly about us. For black people, the movie, one could conclude, was like having a party thrown in your honor -- and not being invited."

"Cold Mountain" includes appearances by a couple dozen black characters, including several who toil on the farm where Kidman's character lives. Blacks are mentioned in the dialogue, and the main white characters at times voice their displeasure with slavery. But the African-Americans who appear never speak.

Dellums said public reaction to his call for a boycott has been "extraordinary."

"I just sent my thoughts out to a select group of friends and colleagues, and it's gone all over the place, including Germany, France, England," he said. "I find it disheartening and disconcerting to be in a free society and working in an industry that has been stereotyped as liberal and then find the powers in this media are very conservative. They're more concerned with the way a film will play in certain demographics as opposed to telling the truth and just letting the art come through."

He's calling for a boycott, he said, because "we as a people don't have the power to tell them how to change unless we pool our dollars. And I find it humiliating to not allow our history to be told honestly."

So far, it seems apparent Dellums' cry for a "Cold Mountain" boycott has gone mostly unheeded. The film has earned more than $70 million since opening on Christmas Day and will most certainly pass the combined box office of two major Hollywood films in recent years that did focus on slavery -- Denzel Washington's "Glory" (1989), which made $26.8 million, and Steven Spielberg's "Amistad" (1997), which pulled in $44.2 million in North America.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of Harvard University's department of African and African-American studies, recently saw the movie at the studio's invitation and didn't share Dellums' criticism.

"Certainly we need more films about the African-American experience during the Civil War and about slavery in general," he says, speaking in response to Miramax's request to address the issue. "And I have to confess, it is remarkably difficult for me as an African-American to sympathize with a Confederate soldier. However, it strikes me that 'Cold Mountain' is essentially a love story between two white people who live in a rural area where slavery was not a fundamental aspect of the economy. It's a mistake to think that most white people in the South had slaves. They didn't. So while I understand the criticism, I think we should be directing our efforts toward having films made where slavery was more essential a part of that story."

He adds that the film's box office success might help pave the way for those other sorts of movies to be made.

"Cold Mountain" has faced other issues, too, including another recent boycott call from some in the western North Carolina movie community, since the $80 million film was made in Romania as opposed to the story's main setting, the mountains of North Carolina.

Miramax Executive Vice President of Worldwide Publicity Amanda Lundberg says the studio shot for three weeks on location in North Carolina and Virginia, spending almost $20 million in the United States. But the film needed a location that would guarantee four distinct seasons and also snow -- something that isn't a predictable quantity in the North Carolina mountains. Ultimately, filming entirely in the United States would have cost around $120 million. "It would have been an irresponsible budget, and the movie would not have been made," Lundberg says.

In another spark of controversy, a recent Washington Post story reported the opinions of three University of Virginia professors on the film's historical accuracy.

One, Gary Gallagher, affirmed the film's opening, the depiction of an 1864 battle during the siege of Petersburg, Va. But he also said one of the keys to the battle was the involvement of African-American troops, which is virtually ignored both in Charles Frazier's book and director Anthony Minghella's film.

Another professor, Edward Ayers, said that on the issue of race and slavery, the filmmakers simply "ducked."

While Dellums and others question the film's historical presentation, Gary Moss, an Oscar voter who lives in Atlanta and was a 1989 Academy Award nominee for the short "Gullah Tales," wonders whether "Cold Mountain" is, at its heart, a Civil War movie.

"On one level it's an odyssey story," he said. "And it's also a film about recoiling from modernity. This isn't about the American South so much as it is about the conflict between the power of machinery and human power. The battle involves a massive explosion and mass slaughter like the world has never seen before."

What Jude Law's character does, Moss said, is attempt to flee from the onslaught of modern machinery -- to return to simplicity.

Moss said he understands why some African-Americans would be upset that the film doesn't forthrightly address the issue of slavery.

"But it would be a terrible shame to boycott the movie for that reason," he said. "I don't like criticizing films for what they are not."

Tara Roberts, of Atlanta, publisher of the multicultural women's magazine Fierce, said her reaction to "Cold Mountain" has been, basically, "whatever."

"The racial history of this country is so complex and painful it can be very challenging to even want to step into it," she said. "I decided at some point that I haven't experienced growing up seeing many images of African-Americans in this country in that period. Slavery is a part of what we experienced and has shaped the mindset of a lot of people in this country."

But she said there is much more on her mind.

"I am more interested in telling and hearing broader stories about us as a people," she said. "Our history is huge. . . . As a black woman, I want to make sure the depth of who we are is expressed."

As for "Cold Mountain," she said, "I wasn't interested in it in the first place. I thought it would be treated that way.

"It's the same reason," she said, "I can no longer go to see 'in the 'hood' movies anymore."

Exactly what I was referring to. Another of your buddies?????

[Tigermike 3,710]

claiming it's a Civil War film that fails to address the issue of slavery.

I have not seen this movie and I am not sure if I will. But if I don't it will not be for this reason.

I would imagine that this movie is a story about those people depicted. Every story does not have to be politically correct nor is it mandatory for a love story to address any and all social issues. I have seen WWII movies that did not touch on the holocaust. Heaven forbid, I have even seen westerns that did not portray the Indians/Native Americans at all. Does that mean the holocaust didn't happen? Does that mean that the Indians/Native Americans were not there? NO to both, it merely means that story did not show or mention them.