Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Elected President of the Summer Movie Blockbuster
What if the American Civil War was not two conflicts, one settling the human rights questions presented in the Declaration of Independence and the other resolving federal versus state powers carved out in the Constitution, but three, the third being a war between living and undead states? Benjamin Walker stars in what has to be the most absurd, over-the-top Gothic horror action movie ever made, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, opening nationwide today. In this film’s alternative rendering of history, buried somewhere on the bloody battlefield of Gettsyburg is a silver fork bearing the initials “A.L.” that came from the White House via an unorthodox railroad, played a small part in driving back Pickett’s infamous charge, and helped usher in a new birth of living freedom in the United States.
As crazy as that sounds, the movie is crazier still. Vampire Hunter begins when the boy who would become our 16th president is about 
10 years old. An encounter on an Indiana dock with an evil local business baron leads to the death of Lincoln’s mother, which in turn leads to young Abe’s discovery that vampires are real and one of them is his mother’s killer. These vampires are not the twinkly teen heartthrobs of Twilight. They are ravenous, evil monsters thriving in the antebellum American south to build themselves a slave empire. The peculiar institution of slavery provides the vampires with a captive population on which to feed, as well as build commercial and political wealth. Young Abe, already turned abolitionist by his mother’s anti-slavery beliefs and by his friendship with a free black boy named Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), becomes an axe-wielding action hero at first bent on avenging his mother’s death, and later on eradicating slavery itself to break the power of the vampire empire. Abe meets Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), a mysterious man who saves him from a vampire, offers to train Abe in killing what is already dead, and provides him with targets upon whom to wield his trusty, silver-edged axe.
Gothic design fetishist Tim Burton and director Timur Bekmambetov team up to deliver the film adaption of Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel of the same title, which itself was a fun, page-turning romp that takes actual events in the life of Lincoln and drapes them in a massive layer of vampire violence and horror. The novel worked far better than it had any right to, and Graheme-Smith wrote the film, so it preserves the spirit of the novel quite well. Burton adds his larger-than-life design flair, and Bekmambetov brings bullet time effects, 3D blood splatters, flying decapitations and a visceral visual energy to the film, which never lets up once the killing starts. Quentin Tarantino would have a hard time surpassing the surreal level of violence that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter delivers, but with higher-minded dialogue and ideas driving the bizarre plot forward.
Hollywood is now in its “how frikkin’ bizarre can we possibly get?” mode. It’s what happens because echo chambers seldom birth novelty. Just look at academia.
Tim Burton has never made a movie I would want to watch. His celebrations of death and desecration may find resonance in our ever sicker culture, but noone can tell me it’s healthy to watch this crap.
Whether he rots in Hell seems to be a moot point, as I rather suspect he’d fancy it.
“Ed Wood”, “Mars Attacks” and “Edward Sicissorhands” are some of his best films and have nothing at all to do with death or desecretion. You might try to at least passingly acquaint yourself with something before dismissing it as crap.
John j, if it does treat the civil war with respect, you should eat your words.
I just hope no Confederate apologists to claim it’s all a plot against the south’s “good” name.
In the book:
Abe learned to hate vampires early on.
Abe used the axe full time to support his family, and was comfortable with it.
Abe discovered slavery was for feeding vampires, and was utterly outraged.
From there, the plot follows rather directly.
John j, if it does treat the civil war with respect, you should eat your words.
I just hope no Confederate apologists show up to claim it’s all a plot against the south’s “good” name.
What’s next from Hollywierd, “Thomas Jefferson, On the trail of Frankenstein’s Monster” or “Ronald Reagan, Werewolf Hunter”?
“Ronald Reagan, Werewolf Hunter”
That would totally rock.
Not Werewolf, go with Werebears, it fits in with the fighting of Communist Russia.
I like “Ronald Reagan: were-jackass hunter”
I would go with ManBearPig myself.
Otto – to late, FDR got there first
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fdr_american_badass/
Ronald Reagan, Zombie Slayer – The true story of how he toppled the Soviet Union
No movie need be made about Ronald Reagan battling werewolves or The Reagans ghost-busting the White House: in real life Ronald Reagan put a stake through the heart of the Giant Red Bear. A movie about some fictional exploits of Reagan at this point couldn’t hope to match the reality of what he accomplished. Besides, there’s just no actor today who could play Reagan – no one has balls close to big enough.
Fred Saberhagen beat you to it back in the ’80s with THE FRANKENSTEIN PAPERS (I believe it was titled). Ben Franklin features in it somewhat toward the end, if memory serves.
I greatly enjoyed the 2008 film “Lord of the Zombies”, about the awesome O campaign. It still gives me tingles! I also loved the 2009 release “Barack Obama: Jobs Killer!” (with an awesome sequel every year after that), and who can forget the brilliant 2012 blockbuster “Barack Obama: Donations Hunter!” starring Sarah Jessica Seabiscuit, George Clooney, and that nice lady from Vogue magazine!
It’s not just Presidents. I had my own over-the-top/under-the-bottom scenario as to why Andrew Breitbart REALLY died. Suffice it to say that a noble sacrifice was made, and ultimate darkness held at bay – for now…
– fought Santa Anna the Vampire.
You got it backwards. Slaver Sam Houston was the vampire. Santa Anna, leader of a nation that had abolished slavery long before the backward U.S. did, was the vampire hunter.
Ha! Santa Anna was busy trying to enslave the whole of Mexico under his dictatorship, and you zoom straight to an abolition of slavery that Santa Anna had nothing to do with (which, by the way, did nothing to actually stop coerced labor under the caste system).
Mexican (and by extension, Texan) history is a complicated thing…maybe you should, you know, read about it sometime.
It’s from a novel, that the film was adapted, guys. And because it is so over the top, it makes it awesome.
The premise is so completely and maniacally over-the-top that it sort of compels your respect. I hope that Burton doesn’t include a educational tie-in package for this film like Oliver Stone did with “JFK.” There are probably some cement-headed teachers out there that would actually believe that this film is based on previously undiscovered facts.
Well it sure beats the hell out of another walking dead film or another insufferable rom-com with Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Garner, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Paul Rudd or or any of the others from that amazingly interchangeable pool of aging young performers.
I see you doubt the authenticity of Lincoln’s ‘Lost’ diaries. This movie is more factual than JFK by Oliver Stone ever was…
Lincoln was the greatest homicidal statist our country has ever had.
Lincoln is the Travis Bickle of American Presidents.
Hmmm… anyone up to finance a remake?
“Lincoln was the greatest homicidal …”
And your point is?
“… statist our country has ever had.”
Nonsense. Couldn’t hold a candle to FDR.
Funny, a movie with Lincoln as a monster fighter. The president who caused an unnecessary war with the blood of millions on his hands is a hero? The second biggest statist after Roosevelwho uspended habeus corpus, who treated Southern POWs worse than animals as a monster fighter? And just as bad as that portraying Southerners as evil when the South produced the greatest men and soldiers of the time. Who remembers anything about yankee generals except Grant as a bloodthirsty drunk and Sherman deliberately destroyed an already defeated Georgia? They were butchers who should have been tried and executed for war crimes had they lost.
Ruh-roh; tinfoil hat alert!
So now the “railsplitter” president has set his axe to a higher purpose!
I get the impression that the author was ashamed that he really liked the movie.
“The president who caused an unnecessary war with the blood of millions on his hands is a hero?”
Don’t bombard a federal fort to start one. The Japanese found that out somewhat later.
Don’t have a military installation on another countries territory. That in itself was an act of aggression. Don’t try and argue that Fort Sumter was the South’s fault. Lincoln wanted war desperately and he got it and it eventually killed him.
Fort Sumpter belonged to the United States of America when the South claimed it was a new nation. In order for a peaceful secession to occur, the fate of federal property, federal debts, the federal treasury, western territory, borders of states, etc. would have needed to be settled through peaceful negotiations. Once you attempt to change the state of affairs on the battlefield, the chance for a peaceful secession would have been lost.
I think Northern sentiment made a peaceful secession unlikely. The Southern attempt to change the status quo by force of arms made it impossible.
There is also a question as to whether a peaceful secession was less undesirable than the war that came, but that’s a separate issue.
If you research the issue, you will find that the Confederate government was trying to negotiate the payment of federal occupied properties in the South – only Lincoln insisted on pushing to reinforce Sumter and hold on to it anyway.
Trying to buy off the victim of theft makes it ok?
The CSA was about repudiating the rule of law, it was as criminal a gang as the Democrats were then and are now.
Using vampirism as a metaphor for the Southern ruling class is a perfectly apt one.
@ Tom Perkins – exactly what “theft” are you referring to? It was no more “theft” than when the original colonies left the British Empire – or would you suggest the former colonists stole their territory?
As for “repudiating the rule of law”, it was Lincoln who:
- waged a war without a declaration of war from Congress
- suspended habeus corpus
- conducted unrestricted warfare against non-combatants in a scorched earth policy
- deliberately allowed Confederate POW’s to die from starvation and lack of medical treatment even though the US had access to such supplies and was not under a naval blockade
- announced an edict with no authority under the Constitution banning a practice, however unpleasant, that was specifically legal under that same Constitution, and which coincidentally had no force outside of areas not under Union control while at the same time allowing slavery to continue unabated in certain Union occupied areas
As for the Southern ruling class, keep in mind that General Lee (who was most definitely a member of that class) freed his slaves while General Grant was forced to only with the passage of a constitutional amendment!
Scott
You are making yourself look foolish with your historical illiteracy in bad mouthing my second favorite Civil War General.
Ulysses Grant received a slave from his father in law as a wedding gift. If he had freed the man immediately, that would have been seen as an insult to his wife’s father which is seldom a good idea. During the time that Grant was trying to support his family by operating a farm and selling firewood, the slave lived with them and worked as a farm hand. When Grant gave up the attempt at farming he freed the slave despite the fact that it meant considerable financial sacrifice. Slaves could be sold for a considerable sum but Grant, despite his poverty, gave the man his freedom.
This was in the 1850s, long before the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Ammendment.
@ Mark in Texas,
Ah, I just love it when someone less educated decides to argue history with me!
General Grant purchased the slave, William Jones, in 1858 to work on his farm. He was not inherited.
In addition, there were at least 4 other slaves (that we know of) who he came by via marriage – I’m guessing these were the slaves you referred to as having come from his father-in-law – and which both he and his wife refused to free.
I guess in your view, insulting the in-laws over something like slavery is a non-starter, but engaging in war to destroy slavery (not that Grant saw himself as doing that) was acceptable?!?
In fact, his wife Julie wrote the following in 1863 after traveling to a non-slave state:
“At Louisville, my nurse left me, as I suppose she feared losing her freedom if she returned to Missouri. I regretted this as she was a favorite with me. However, she married soon after.”
This would have been about 2 years into the war at that time.
Calling the woman a “nurse” does not take away the fact the woman was afraid of losing her freedom – which goes to verify that the woman was in fact a slave.
And then there is the quote from Grant himself when asked why he didn’t free his slaves prior to the Amendment – “Good help is so hard to come by.”
I just love the smell of whitewash burning…..
Well, yes, the South would have been happy to starve Fort Sumter’s garrison out if Lincoln hadn’t forced the issue by attempting to reinforce and reprovision it. Your point is?
Keep in mind the timeframe here. Lincoln was elected president in November 1860, South Carolina seceded in December 1860, the Confederacy was formed in February 1861 (originally including six states, with one more to join before the attack on Fort Sumter), the Confederacy seized all the other forts in the Charleston Harbor also in February 1861, Lincoln became president in March 1961, and Fort Sumter was attacked in April 1861, *followed* by Lincoln’s call for volunteers to the army and the secession of Virginia (followed by three other states.) That’s not much time for negotiations.
I read the book and loved it. I’m definitely going to see the movie at my first possible opportunity.
And the southern apologists/Lincoln was an evil statist come slithering out from the cracks of the internet….
We have nothing to apologize for, we fought honorably for our homeland against invaders. We fought for small government and freedon, there is nothing bad about that. You yankees should apologize for the death and destruction you caused.
Yep, boy, damn shame the south didn’t win with all that virtue down there! Now how would that have worked out? Just think of where they would be today!
Like most yankees you despise your betters. Not that it takes much to be better than you in every way.
Nope. Mom born and raised in Memphis, and I in NC, safely South of the Mason Dixon and all that. In fact, Mom’s family traces its Southern roots much further back than the Civil War, some were slave holders, and all fought for the south. It’s just that I have this thing this suite of things called morals, and with them the ability to know evil when I see it. It is a shame that some are willfully ignorant all to remember a past in a way that it never was.
You actually consider it “moral” to engage in a scorched earth policy against a civilian population even after the war was already clearly ending? A policy that endorsed attacking small farms in the south with combat soldiers when the grown men were away, burning the house to the ground, taking every bit of livestock away, taking every crop in the field – and what they didn’t take they destroyed – even down to breaking into splinters any farming implement as a way of making sure the family starved to death afterwards?
Your “morals” endorse the destruction of the very Constitution that created that nation in the first place because it was inconvenient, and within which no authority to engage in that illegal war to begin with could be found?
A morality that ignores the continued slavery in Union territory even as Union apologists now claim it was all about ending slavery?
Odd sense of morality ya got there.
And I say this as a born and bred Southerner and a descendent not only of Confederates, but also of colonists who fought the British during the American Revolution.
Val, you are a traitor, worth nothingand believing nothing. I would feel sorry for you but you don’t deserve it. I hope one day that you have to make a choice, either be a loyal to your homeland or pay the price for your treason. I know which choice I hope you make.
Some people just hate the United States. There really is nothing else to say.
Had the South won the war, slavery probably would have withered away regardless as it had everywhere else in the western hemisphere – and without all of the bloodshed and wholesale slaughter and destruction inflicted upon a civilian population by a$$holes like Sherman.
That same devastation that forced generations into abysmal poverty within the South – poverty inflicted on all races living in the region – would not have occurred.
Had that been the case, the South would have been in a far better position now than being connected at the hip (or is that chained by the throat?), to a government heedlessly spending its way into oblivion with multi-trillion dollar debts.
No, slavery would have existed in the South for a very long time, and letting it be for even one more second than necessary was a crime against humanity in the same league as leaving communism to fester–and given the analogy of the Dred Scot decision causing the whole country to become slaveholding territory to be like letting the Iron Curtain to cover the globe; the existence of the CSA was treason against the constitution, humanity, and the American Revolution. Lee was an evil man, he chose unwisely.
For slavery to be done away with in the South peaceably, it would require the people supporting it to eat their words. Like the Progressives of today who are the self identified 20% calling themselves “liberal”, the slavery supported lived evil, loved evil, depended on evil for their wealth and status, and called evil good. They quoted the Bible to excuse it, when I think Christ could only have condemned them for it. Slavery would no sooner have ended in the South than Pelosi would renounce herself, or her youngest adherent the same.
In Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln, they got no more than they bargained for, what was needful to end them as quickly as could be seen to do it.
Once again @ Tom Perkins….
So General Lee was “evil”?
This would be the same Lee who began freeing his slave prior to the Civil War,
Was actively involved in the African nation of Liberia,
Who continued to correspond in affectionate terms with former slaves via mail,
Who set up a school for slaves at his Arlington Plantation in direct violation of exosting law as he felt they needed to be educated in order to function in a society as non-slaves,
Was actively promoting the idea of allowing slaves to become armed Confederate soldiers and promoted the concept their freedom was assured after the war was over – much as General Washington had done during the American Revolution,
Actively took communion with a former slave at the alter of St. Pauls Episcopal Church after the war had ended.
You mean THAT General Lee?
Doesn’t appear, as a member of the Southern Ruling class, that he anticipated slavery continuing indefinitely….
You, in a firly short post, show your ignorance of history, economics and human nature. Slavery was a dying institution who death would have been hastened by mechanization. Southerners themselves were increasingly anti-slavery (Robert E. Lee)and saw it as a moral and economic blight on the region. Just as an easy example, which woul you rather have, one mechanical cotton picker or 20 slaves? That’s an easy answer even for someone blinded by hatred of the South as you are. The best outcome would have been the gradual ending of slavery with the deportation of the freed slaves. People in the South were prescient enough to see the horrors of diversity and would have dealt with the problem in their own way.
Calling Lee evil just shows how blind you are. The true evil was Lincoln, Grant and Sherman and their orcs. If we get a chance to do it over again I hope that we do it right this time, end the lives of all who are against us.
We should have engaged in total war, invaded the north and burned everything and killed everyone.
Before the War Against the Rebellion (to use the official term of the time), the most profitable investment on earth was land in a slave state that could produce cotton and slaves to work that land. That is why there was so much money lent by English banks and investors for the purchase of land and slaves. There certainly were no signs that slavery was going to fade away any time soon.
Oh, yes. In maligning Uncle Billy, my favorite Civil War general you ignore this bit from Article 3 Section 3 of the US Constitution.
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”
The penalty for treason is, and always has been, death. Uncle Billy was gentle and kind in merely burning down barns and tearing up railroads. In fact, there was quite a controversy over the generous terms that General Sherman gave to General Johnson when that Confederate general surrendered the week after Lincoln was shot. The victorious nation wanted revenge but Sherman was merciful. The writings of people like you make me suspect that Sherman was too soft hearted.
Treason was being Southern and aiding the north. There could be no treason because the South was fighting fot its homeland. You, I suppose, are Texan, if you had been alive during the Civil War you would be a traitor to your homeland and deserve the worst possible punishment. I am proudly Southern first, we should have been allowed to separate and go our own way. At least we wouldn’t be a part of the nightmare that is happening now.
Lincoln was the first of the big government presidents with no respect for the Constitution or the rights of states or people. He desreved what he got.
Mike
The homeland of everyone born in the United States is the United States. The Constitution defines what is treason.
@ MArk in Texas,
Actually, the 14th Amendment I believe is what clarified US citizenship, and it wasn’t passed until AFTER the Civil War was over. Prior to that, each person considered themselves a citizen first and foremost of the state they were born in.
Mark, you obviously don’t believe in uch of anything except yourself. Any person who would fight against their homeland is a traitor. Remember one thing, the United States wasn’t always here so I owe nothing to an artificial construct, an accident of history. I am a Southener and anyone who tries to hurt my homeland is my enemy, even if that someone happens to be from another part of this continent. I bet you worship the current administration, you and they seem to agree on a lot of things like all powerful governemnt.
There is an old Twilight Zone story about an old devil worshipper who offered a Southern soldier some sort of talisman that could stop time for everyone but him. The soldier could have used it to kill every yankee. He didn’t do it but I think looking at what has happened, i would have.
Another thing, the South was treated worse than any other defeated enemy of the US ever was. Even to this day there are lefovers of the war. Look at the freedom to express your bigotry and hatred of the South without censure, something that many here are very eager to do. Like I said before, you just hate and fear your betters.
Mike
No, I believe in something greater than myself. I believe in the United States of America. I swore an oath to defend it against all enemies both foreign and domestic.
If I had lived in Texas in 1860, I would have agreed with Governor Sam Houston, who spent years trying to get Texas into the United States, that secession was a bad idea and was going to end in tears.
The South was treated worse than any enemy that had been defeated by the United States? Read up on the Indian Wars. Or the War where Mexico lost half its territory to the United States. Or the war where we nuked Japan. Twice. This was after firebombing all their cities and starving their population with an effective naval blockade. That was the same war where after bombing all their cities flat we divided Germany in half, gave a bunch of their territory to Poland and deported millions of ethnic Germans from the rest of Europe to the remaining territory.
The only thing that Confederates who had committed treason by waging war against the United States had to do to regain their full rights as citizens of the United States was to swear an oath of allegiance. Apparently that was too much of a burden for many of them.
@ Mark in Texas….
So ol Sam tried to convince everyone that secession was a bad idea?
Let’s see here – Texas was originally a territory of Mexico.
Texas seceded from Mexico.
Texas joined the US – but if I am not mistaken wasn’t there a condition that they could always leave and revert back to a soveriegn nation? Seems like those old Texan Secessionists (from Mexico) wanted to always leave a back door open for themselves….
Then of course Lincoln supported Texan secession.
And of course he supported West Virginia seceding from Virginia.
But secession from the US by the CSA = bad.
Riiiiggghhhhtttt……..
The viewpoints expressed seem…….inconsistent.
To the best of my knowledge, Lincoln never spoke on the subject of the formerly independent Republic of Texas seceding from the United States on its own. In what I have read, he was addressing the collective entity of the Confederacy.
We know that as a Congressman, Abraham Lincoln was opposed to the annexation of Texas so perhaps he would have been more sympathetic to letting Texas once more go its own way if it had not engaged in entangling alliances with the other Confederate states.
freedom? for who?
That’s the War of Northern Aggression to you!
Ha ha! Yup, #2, just like their children, the Progressives, they dream of rebuilding the Empire and they DON’T WANT TO STOP.
If you would take a moment to think, just a little, you’d realize just how stupid that sounds. The South is the most Conservative region of the country. The “Progressives” are predominately in the northern states.
“Don’t have a military installation on another countries territory.”
One of the most bizzare comments I’ve ever seen on the internet.
Are you so ignorant of geography? Sumter was in Charleston Harbor, a part of South Carolina which was a part of the Confederate States. So yes it was manned illegally by Union troops, invaders by any definition. Would you tolerate a North Korean military base on Catalina? The CSA had every right to eject the Union troops.
Fort Sumter was built with federal government funds on an artificial island built, also with federal funds, from granite rocks shipped from Maine.
There is no question that Fort Sumter was property of the United States government. I think that a reasonable legal argument can be made that Fort Sumter was actually part of Maine.
The South was trying to buy out US property interests in the South. Lincoln refused to negotiate and instead took steps to reinforce Sumter – an act he was already aware at the time was guaranteed to be considered an act of war by the Confederacy.
Similar, as I’ve already noted, to Kennedy considering the basing of missiles in Cuba to have been an act of aggression by the USSR and which he took military measures to rectify.
If I offer to buy your car and you refuse to sell it am I justified in pulling out a gun to improve my negotiating position?
@ Mark in Texas,
So I take it you believe President Kennedy was wrong to not agree for Soviet missiles to be based on Cuban soil pointed at the US, and that taking military action against both Cuba and the USSR was the wrong thing to do?
After all, a military blockade is considered an act of war.
Not defending either of those nations – but setting aside the politics it is the same thing.
In the case of Ft Sumter, that was the gun the US had pointing at the CSA.
Not only do I believe that President Kennedy was justified but I believe (surprise, surprise) that President James K.Polk was justified in annexing Texas to the United States and backing up that action with military force. He did so in the knowledge that he had the military ability to back up his position.
President Polk compromised with the British over the Oregon Territory rather than insisting on a northern border at 55 degrees 40 minutes latitude as some hot heads wanted. That is because Polk was a reasonable man and knew that Britain, while not wanting war at that time, was the most militarily powerful nation on earth. Mexico, on the other hand, was not able to defend the northern half of its territory and would have eventually lost it, possibly to powerful European powers like England, Russia or France. Polk’s good judgement gained for the United States all the land west of the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean. Sadly, California doesn’t seem to be working out all that well these days but that can hardly be blamed on James K.Polk.
The thing is that President Polk had a good evaluation of what was possible politically and militarily. Sam Houston also had that kind of good judgement. Jefferson Davis, Edmund Ruffin, William Yancey and other Fire Eaters lacked the political skill and judgement of President Polk and led millions of people into a futile war which killed off something like 30% of the southern white men between the ages of 20 and 30 and devastated and impoverished the South for close to a hundred years as well as leaving a legacy of bitterness that you and Mike seem to be displaying. It was stupid and wrong. The world is a better place today because that wrongness and stupidity was punished with absolute failure and defeat.
@ Mark in Texas,
Soooooo, Kennedy blockading Cuba with the threat of US Naval power being used to blockade (with the threat to confiscate or sink Soviet ships traveling to) Cuba and those ships not being under any authority of the US in any sense, is legitimate because it was considered a dire threat to the US and was unacceptable – but the CSA blockading a similar circumstance that posed a threat to the most important port the CSA had on the east coast is not legitimate?
Your reasoning is purely situational.
Scott
The situation is that unlike relations between sovereign nations, the people who fired on Fort Sumter were US citizens in rebellion against the lawfully elected government of the United States. By levying war against the United States, they satisfied the conditions specified in Article 3 Section 3 of the US Constitution. They might have believed that they were citizens of a separate country and not subject to the laws of the United States. That is a defense similar to that given by jihadis who claim that they too are not subject to the laws of the United States even while they are within the borders of the United States. In neither case do the erroneous beliefs of the perpetrators excuse their crimes.
Reality is the stuff that is still there even when you don’t believe in it.
Well gee Mark, by your logic then George Washington was a filthy traitor who deserved to be hanged as he was legally a British subject committing treason.
Imagine the nerve of that man! He even presided over the creation of a nation that had……..cue organ music…..slavery as a legal institution in a world where the practice was commonplace!
Obviously he was an evil man and the nation he founded was inherently evil.
/s
Yeahhhhh, right.
It’s not like it was a small island country near the US, with perhaps another country basing military resources like missiles on it. Good thing someone like Kennedy was in office at the time to make sure nothing extreme like a military naval blockade occurred.
Why that could have led the world right up to the brink of a nuclear war!
Fortunately we never had to worry over such things……./s
If this movie is a success, maybe we’ll see Grahame- Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies next.
I sure hope so.
I’d seen the book at the stores and enjoyed the previews of this movie, but (despite my respect for Bryan Preston’s opinions), I’ll have to skip the movie. I thought it was going to deal with Lincoln before the War Between the States, which I might enjoy. But if it’s taking this Southerners=evil line, there’s no way I could stand to watch it. I don’t really detest Yankees’ hagiography of Lincoln, as long as they don’t feel the need to portray Confederates as bad in the process. But why make a movie that denigrates half your potential audience?
Cha-ching! We have a winner! Give that man a cigar for so succinctly explaining the matter!
I saw this movie, I bought a copy because it deserves a place in my collection. Without spoiling anything, this movie is warped genius, it’s well shot and the historic location is a terrific bonus. Bottom line, this movie is FUN. Those who like this wide open humor angle will also like Tucker&Dale Versus Evil.
Compared to the liberal anti-war/PC tripe Hollywood has made of late, this film marks a direction much more to the liking of Americans who actually like America.
“Emancipate that!”
So Burton makes a movie not only insulting descendants of those Southerners by claiming yet again Southerners were fighting to defend slavery (they weren’t as some 90% or so never owned slaves), but to add additional insult the movie asserts they were also trying to create a nation of blood sucking vampires?
Definitely taking a pass on this one as Burton is a douche.
If the fact this is a complete work of fiction is set aside, I would suggest – based upon how the Indian Wars were conducted up to how even now that federal behemoth seeks to control every single aspect of individual life, and numerous instances between) that the nation that won that conflict was more akin to a nation that sucks the lifesblood out everyone else than a defeated Confederacy.
The premise is amusing, even symbolic, but I don’t really enjoy movies with buckets of blood or excessive special effects of any sort, and I’m just pretty sick of vampires in any case.
Any article that can bring out the modern day Confederate Sore Loser movement is A-OK with me. Most entertaining. The novel sounds wonderful, and the movie has Rufus Sewell in it, so there’s always that to recommend it. Might have to go see it.
Looks like you will be sitting in the same section as Tom Perkins, and thinking this movie is some sort of history class….
“claiming yet again Southerners were fighting to defend slavery (they weren’t as some 90% or so never owned slaves)”
Well, they were. The convenient “States’ rights” phrase bandied about by slavery apologists referred to the right to carry property across state lines. As some states made it both illegal to own a certain type of property and also caused that type of property to be no longer property once said property entered those states, it gave rise to this ridiculous excuse of “States’ rights.” Obviously, the property referred to were also known as slaves.
So, go on – keep defending slavery.
I feel no need to defend slavery, and have yet to do so in this forum. I have simplyy spoken the truth.
Of course, if you’d like a better source of authority on the matter, then how about listening to someone who was actually there and had probably a pretty good grasp on exactly what the north was – and was NOT – fighting for.
If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would have resigned my commission, and offered my sword to the other side.”
General Ulysis S. Grant
“I feel no need to defend slavery, and have yet to do so in this forum. I have simplyy spoken the truth.”
Well, no, you haven’t. The leaders of the confederacy all admitted the whole reason for the separation was the preservation of the peculiar institution.
Read the documents that the legislatures of eleven states of the Confederacy issued when they declared themselves independent of the United States. Almost all of them state quite specifically that it was to preserve slavery.
@ Tom Perkins AND Mark in Texas (yep, it’s a twofer),
Never underestimate the opportunistic urges of politicians and their special interests to insert their own desires into any document they have access to writing.
Consider the Obamacare bill, for instance……
Anyway, since most Southerners never owned slaves – and even General Lee himself actively sought it’s peaceful ending, that even Lincoln as mostly ambivalent about ending slavery being a justification thru much of that war and even stated that if he could end it without ending slavery that bhe would, that even his own General Grant maintained slavery in his personal life – the idea that millions of Southerners marched off to war ro defend the practice of slavery when it was still clearly legal AND Constitutional is fairly shallow thinking.
So your claim is that most southern legislatures were lying when they claimed that they were seceding to preserve slavery? Well, they were Democrats so it is a possibility.
Your logic is kind of convoluted, though when you say that they were lieing in order to make secession more popular and at the same time that 90% of the people did not own slaves and that slavery was not viewed all that favorably among the white population.
Here’s a simpler explanation: The legislatures meant what they said when they claimed that they were leaving the Union to preserve slavery. Those people who did not own slaves hoped to be prosperous enough to own slaves some day and they were willing to go to war over that.
Zombies, vampires, were-beasts…and Hollywood has lost all interest in sword-swingin’, swash-buckling skeletons.
Where’s the 1950′s version of Sinbad when needed?
how about “Martin Luther King, Modern-day Don Juan”?
The reviews aren’t good, but I had a blast. *Of course* it was absurd. I had to explain to my son that Mary Todd Lincoln was nowhere near as hot as Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I loved the casting and the story made a heck of a lot more sense than Prometheus.
There is a certain inevitability to all of this.
Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Killer
Barack Obama:President
None of this could be happening by accident.
Brace for impact.
Sorry, just seems like stupidty. How about –
George Washington as Frankie Avalon in a new version of Beach Blanket Bingo.
Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson: Dark Knight and Gay Robin.
Ulysses S Grant finds kryptonite durIng the Wilderness campaign, builds a spaceship and kills Superman’s dad so he never makes it to earth.
To set the record straight, U. S. Grant owned no slaves of his own. The woman he married inherited slaves from her father, one of whom Grant freed at some cost to their mutual assets, when Grant was not a wealthy man. I can’t say I’ve heard what domestic intranquility that may have led to.
Between Lee and Grant, do the treason-lovers here propose Grant or Lee did more to end the institution?
The war against the southern treason was a very necessary one, without the successful prosecution of such neither the rule of law nor it’s constitution could have any meaning. None who object to Obama’s employing “prosecutorial discretion” for the most base of motives could faithfully oppose Lincoln’s having uttered the Presidential while meaning it. He undertook the war because the constitution and rule of law required it.
Certainly Grant would have objected to a war to end slavery–almost every one including Lincoln would have. That would have been an illegal war. The end of slavery in rebel territory by the war powers proclamation of the President was a means to that end–and Grant had no objection to it. The quote Scott gives is a lie of his own by telling half a truth. The President had no power to undertake emancipation in areas where the civil courts operated and the law supported it, so he did not. When he felt it was advantageous to seek the just end of emancipation where he could, he did so.
The South in fact had no just reason to seek the end of the rule of law by force, and certainly Lincoln gave them none. They simply didn’t see the election go the way they wanted to, so to be sure they stayed the biggest fish in their pond, the Southern oligarchy wanted to make their pond smaller. There is no higher or better nature to their ignoble cause, which Lee capably but evilly served.
You cannot do right by serving wrong, no matter how gentlemanly you go about it, or what other good things you do.
“But if it’s taking this Southerners=evil line, there’s no way I could stand to watch it. I don’t really detest Yankees’ hagiography of Lincoln, as long as they don’t feel the need to portray Confederates as bad in the process. But why make a movie that denigrates half your potential audience?”
Trouble is, the South was evil. And intent on staying that way by force of arms.
They lost and that’s a fine thing.
And really, I don’t think its half their audience who feel any affection for that treason. I’d be shocked if it were more than 4% of the country, and I really think it’s more like 1/4%.
“Tom Perkins – exactly what “theft” are you referring to?”
The attempted theft, for example, of Fort Sumter.
“It was no more “theft” than when the original colonies left the British Empire – or would you suggest the former colonists stole their territory?”
No, I state the colonists had actual valid grievances against the Crown. The most the CSA can claim is an election didn’t go their way.
“As for “repudiating the rule of law”, it was Lincoln who:
- waged a war without a declaration of war from Congress”
Not required when not fighting a foreign nation, per international law, and not required by the Constitution when suppressing rebellion. And Congress certainly approved of it, they kept on paying for it.
“- suspended habeus corpus”
Actually, martial law is a state of fact when the courts aren’t operating but the military is, and Congress did sign on to it.
“- conducted unrestricted warfare against non-combatants in a scorched earth policy”
The seizure of war material is allowed by the rules of war–if they didn’t want their property taken and/or destroyed, the southern civilians should have denied it to the grey bellies. I note the North conducted no such campaigns where the loyal counties remained in the mountains.
“- deliberately allowed Confederate POW’s to die from starvation and lack of medical treatment even though the US had access to such supplies and was not under a naval blockade”
It’s a soul deaf to both right and irony who thinks that the criminal gang who both undertook an illegal war of choice and perpetrated Andersonville, has any point of objection to the like treatment of those fellow criminals who could have fairly been hung en masse.
“- announced an edict with no authority under the Constitution banning a practice, however unpleasant, that was specifically legal under that same Constitution, and which coincidentally had no force outside of areas not under Union control while at the same time allowing slavery to continue unabated in certain Union occupied areas”
The seizure of contraband and war material in war, and the stated intent that it is such, is a proper exercise of the war powers as traditionally employed by the executive under the constitution. That document grants such powers to the President without defining them, so they remain as they have been. The ignorance of history here is yours.
“As for the Southern ruling class, keep in mind that General Lee (who was most definitely a member of that class) freed his slaves while General Grant was forced to only with the passage of a constitutional amendment!”
Any dissatisfaction with slavery Lee may have had does not counter his sadly able service in preserving it. Too bad he wasn’t shot dead in the Mexican war, he’d have died an honorable man.
Tom Perkins, you are vile and ignotant filth.You justify an illegal war of agression against a people who just wanted to be free of an overreaching central government that did not represent them. Remember, if you ever knew, whole states in the South had only only a handful of votes for Lincoln. He was not president of the South, he did not represent us and would have not governed with the best ibterests of Southerners in mind. He was a tool, an useful idiot for the yankee industrialists who were as bad as the absolute worst Southern slaveowners. The life of a northern mill worker at that time was little better than slavery. Lincoln was ready to increase tariffs to shut off exports and imports from af to the South. He didn’t car about blacks at all, he thought they were inferior. He was strictly a willing tool of the northern oligarchs.
Howw dare you say Lee was evvil, compare him to the drunk Grant and say that honestly. Read Freeman’s biography and bow to him as your superior in every way. You are a bigot not worthy to even speak his name.
I’ll compare Lee to Grant.
Lee lost. Grant won.
Want more comparisons? Grant stood by his oath and defended the United States and its constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Lee, not so much.
If you read Grant’s memoirs, he was not that impressed by Lee’s abilities, but then, he did not encounter Lee until later in the war by which time the glory days of the Confederacy were behind them.
But mostly, Grant won and Lee lost.
Grant had a far higher opinion of General Lee than you admit. Anyone who reads eyewitness accounts of their meeting at Appamattox Courthouse, and the reasons for the very favorable terms Grant offered, can clearly see that.
Grant treated Lee with courtesy because he had been taught good manners. It used to be that southerners understood about manners. What sad times we live in when southerners have no more understanding of good manners than yankees from New York City.
You suggest that the reason that when state legislatures passed their measures of secession they were lying when they said they were doing it to preserve slavery. Is it also your contention that when Ulysses Grant wrote his memoirs he was lying when he said that Lee was no more than competent as a military commander but not particularly talented? Why do you think Grant would lie? It would make Grant look better if he had bested an extremely good general rather than one that was merely OK. Grant wrote his memoirs as he was dieing from throat cancer so they might well be taken to be a death bed statement which is often given extra weight as the dieing person has nothing to gain by lying.
Lee lost, yes, but he fought honorably and did not wage war on civilians. Your drunken hero Grant, you can’t say the same about him. Lee didn’t waste the lives of his men in insane frontal charges (except Gettysburg, where he may have been having a heart attack) like Grant did. Red about the Crater and tell me Grant wassn’t a bloodthirsty butcher. Besides genious, compare the ability of the South to supply its armies to that of Grant. In a fair fight Lee would have destroyed Grant and had him shot if his own soldiers didn’t do it first. Lee was a better man and a better soldier. Anyone who doesn’t see that is willfully blind. Grant was an envoius little drunk who knew Lee was better than him in every way.
“Lee lost, yes, but he fought honorably and did not wage war on civilians”
Tell it to the civilian dead at Gettysburg.
I’m sorry, I missed the instance where General Lee deliberately ordered the murder of civilians at Gettysburg. Could you perhaps point us to a viable reference for this accusation?
Scott, you should have figured out by now that Tom Perkinds doesn’t let facts get in the way of his hate. Maybe one day he will climb out of his sewer and admit just how ignorant and bigoted he is, I doubt it though. Anti-Southern bigotry is the only acceptible form of bigotry now and he has shown his true colors as a raging bigot.
“I’m sorry, I missed the instance where General Lee deliberately ordered the murder of civilians at Gettysburg.”
I’d like to see either of you people give an example of Grant ordering the murder of any civilians in the CSA.
Point is, when Lee had an opportunity to give orders which killed Northern civilians, he did just that.
@ Tom Perkins,
General Sherman presented his plans to General Grant for a scorched earth policy against the South. General Grant knew precisely what Sherman intended to do – and approved the plan.
Were such a tactic to be employed today, Sherman would face a charges of committing war crimes.
Or are you so clueless you will now claim his bummers never murdered nor deliberately starved to death Southern civilians in his march across the Confederacy?
If the South didn’t think the fight was fair, they probably should have reconsidered before they committed the worst act of rebellion and mass treason in American history.
Grant did what needed to be done. Burnside threw away men’s lives at Fredricksburg with fourteen separate Picket’s charge type frontal assaults and accomplished nothing.
Read about Grant’s war of maneuver in the west. He was a skilled tactician, able at logistics and a brilliant strategist.
Speaking of supplies, once the South switched to raising food crops from cotton, there was plenty of food available to feed the troops if only the leadership of the Confederacy had not been such a bunch of ham fisted incompetents. But that is the problem when governed by a narrow oligarchy, there is too small a pool of talent for all the tasks that need doing.
You really don’t know much about the War, that’s evident from your post. Grant as a tactical genious? Surely you jest, He was a methodical, plodding general who never had anything less than overwhelming superiority in men and material. Like I brought up earlier, look at the Crater. He spent the lives of his black troops for nothing, it was ok by him though, it was just blacks and soldiers, they meant nothing to him at all.
By the time Grant moved to the army of the Potomac, Lee was severely hamstrung by lack of supplies and the deaths of some of his best generals, Jackson particularly. After Gettysburg the Army of Northern Virginia had no choice but to fight a defensive war. Remember one thing that gives me great pleasure, more yankees died than Southern soldiers during the war.
Mike
Read about Grant’s campaigns in the west. He routinely outmaneuvered his Confederate opponents, cutting off their supply routes and causing them to abandon strong defensive positions without the need for direct assaults. Read about the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson. Read about how he took Vicksburg, securing Union control of the Mississippi, splitting the Confederacy and cutting off the eastern Confederate states from Texas cattle and war supplies landed in Mexico and transported overland through Texas. That pretty much settled the outcome of the war in July of 1863 but bloody minded fanatics forced the thing to be driven to its ultimate conclusion almost two years later.
The Battle of the Crater was such a dogs breakfast because the black troops who had originally been selected to enter first were replaced at the last moment precisely because Grant did not want to send black troops into a potential slaughter. The black troops had been trained for the mission and their replacements had not been. I agree that it was a bad call. The black troops who had been trained might have been able to break the Confederate line at the crater.
Speaking of black troops, would you like to comment on Fort Pillow?
Sorry to break it to ya, but your opinion is not fact. I have provided facts, you have provided opinions. To be honest I didn’t even bother to read all the way through the drivel you posted as it was so convoluted as to be ridiculous.
Take this repeated charge of “treason”, for instance. You repeatedly display a lack of comprehension.
While the Constitution does define what ACTIONS constitute treason,the actual definition of the word is not clarified. Much as shooting a man through the head will kill him – it is not murder unless there are specific circumstances.
Same with the charge of treason. They defined what actions could be construed as treasonous, but didn’t bother to define the word as they clearly figured people knew what they were talking about.
In this case, treasonous behavior would include attempting to overthrow the government – something the Confederacy never did.
Does someone who gives up their US citizenship commit treason? Of course not, for as you have pointed out elsewhere the penalty for treason is execution – and those who in the modern era have given up their US citizenship are obviously not being hunted down and charged with treason and summarily executed.
No, for treason to be a valid charge you need more – namely attempting to overthrow the US Government.
That is an act the Confederacy never attempted, even though at several times they could have marched on Washington, DC and captured it.
Do try harder though….this is fun.
The Constitution is quite specific in its definition of treason in Article 3 Section 3:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
The people of the eleven states of the Confederacy levied war against the United States. This is fact is not in question.
At what point did the CSA attempt to overthrow the US government?
The fact is they didn’t, which is why the US government never tried Jefferson Davis for treason.
When they claimed the US constitution was no longer in force in several of the US states.
The Constitution says “levy war” not “overthrow the government”.
We know that you can read so what is the problem you have with the straightforward language of the Constitution?
Jefferson Davis was not hanged as a traitor because after all the bloodshed of the War Against the Rebellion, there was the naive hope that mercy and kindness would help reunite the nation and put the divisions of the past behind us. The hateful rantings of Mike and your own sophistry in this case indicate what a misguided hope that was. Some people confuse mercy with weakness.
Perhaps a more effective method of national reconciliation would have been to execute every member of the Confederate government and every member of the various state and local governments that had contributed to the rebellion. In the military that would include every officer, commissioned and non commissioned down to the rank of buck sergeant.
The movies based on a fictionalization of historical that I’ve heard of in the works include:
Isaac Newton fighting supernatural pirates during his term as an official in the British Admiralty.
Leonardo da Vinci doing something with the Seal of Solomon, and I can’t remember the particulars.
And Ben Franklin doing something magically sketchy during the Revolution to ensure its success.
It seems to be the new big idea.
How about: Queen Victoria Demon Hunter?
The various pro-confederacy posters on this forum are so over-the-top I’m wondering if they are ‘false-flag’ posters just trying to stir the pot so they can get some juicy quotes. Or perhaps they are just bottom-feeding trolls.
No you are the troll as weil as a bigot. The South deserved its chance to be free. The men back then saw an all powerful Federal government and feared it and wanted to be free of it. We would have never elected a third world president who is a traitor to his country. You seem to be ok with that, so who’s the troll?
They had their chance. They lost.
You should learn something from that.
I’m thinking reconnaissance in force. To say the least.
Sherman did that (recon-in-force) already.
(Whistles “Marching Through Georgia” while going back to lurk.)
They are about par for the course for the sort who think Thomas DiLorenzo has said every thing worth saying about the war, and who haunt LewRockwell.com
The man who ran (runs?) LewRockwell.com was the editor for Ron Paul’s newsletter when he was flirting with WhitePower ™ to stay afloat financially.
Birds of a feather flock together.
Even scummy ones.
First thing, who is this DiLorenzo guy and Lew Rockwall? You do not have the right to accuse me of anything like any white power sympathies or anything like that. You ought to be honest about your beliefs for a change. I believe that the CSA would have been a much better nation than the mess we have now and that we have a lot to learn from them. In fact in our lifetimes we will see the US split into several different nations just liek the old USSR. Personally I think that would be wonderful because there are lots of you anti-Southern bigors in here who I would love to see in a country ruled by your kind. You would beg to be let and and hopefully the border will be closed to scum like you.
Nope, not a troll, and have posted plenty of other times on this site.
However, I will remain quiet while the South and its heritage is maligned no more than I would stay quiet if President Reagan were being maligned.
No, they’re real. Go on Amazon and read reviews of books on the Civil War, and you’ll find morons signing their posts “Yr. Obedient Servant” and doing the “You have impugned mah Honor, Suh!” foolishness that most of the rest of us thought went away with the spitoon and the Virginia Reel. Most of them have read a lot (*VERY* selectively, of course!) and “know” lots of “facts” about the Civil War, and some of them try and hook them into our modern troubles, as if you can make that sort of connection without sounding silly *and* ignorant.
So Robert E. Lee turns out to have been an abolitionist, of a sort. Yeah, but he fought to defend Virginia, and if he’s succeeded the institution of slavery would have been preserved.
And U.S. Grant owned slaves, except he didn’t. The one his father-in-law gave him he apparently freed immediately.
Sherman’s an especially interesting case. He appears to have been, at least partially, a racist, and he was the head of the Louisiana Military Institute (which became LSU after the war, if I understand it correctly) when the war broke out. He had many Southern friends, and most of them expected him to join them as seccessionists…but he resigned from the school, and went North. As for deliberately killing Southern civilians…no. The *Confederates*, whenever their army was North of Mason-Dixon, kidnapped as many blacks as they could get their hands on, bringing them south to make them slaves, whether they had been or not, but the Yankees, no. Individuals no doubt committed crimes, some were convicted of them and given pretty harsh sentences (Sherman was nothing if not draconian in his punishments), but organized murder? No.
In the 19th Century, if you were an army officer, you took an oath to defend the United States Constitution against all enemies, foreign and *domestic*, each time you were promoted. Lee and the other senior Confederate officers who fought against the United States took this oath repeatedly, apparently with their fingers crossed behind their backs. I know that Lee had positive qualities, but he also had some negative ones, and this is one of the more serious. If you take an oath, it should mean something, not just be a “unless I change my mind…” sort of thing.
The South seceded because of two things: one, they felt the institution of slavery threatened; and two, they weren’t in charge of the country any more, because of the changing demographics of the pre-war country. Of the first 7 presidents of the United States, five were Southerners (four from Virginia, the fifth from Tennessee) and the South dominated the Congress and much of the political discussion. However, as new immigrants arrived in the United States, they tended to gravitate to the North and West. The South wasn’t really much of a land of opportunity, with the slave oligarchy controlling everything and essentially restricting opportunity to their relatives and friends. They were relentlessly racist, not just against blacks but even against Irishmen and Eastern Europeans, who were entering the United States at the time. If you look at a list of Generals of the Confederacy and the Union, on the one hand you have Lee, Jackson, Johnston, Hood, Bragg, Stuart and so forth. As ethnic as they get is Beauregard (who was French, from Louisiana) and Longstreet, who was Dutch. There was also a wonderfully named Zollicoffer, who was a newspaperman turned General who was killed in his first battle. On the Union side, the leaders were Grant and Sherman and McClellan and Burnside and Hooker and Meade, but beyond that, you had Schurz and Sigel and von Gilsa and Schimmelpfennig and even one Polish guy who supposedly wasn’t promoted to General once because no one in Congress could pronounce the guy’s name. It was a much more (yes, here comes that word) diverse army, as opposed to the elitist Southern one that was essentially monocultural. Diversity isn’t always bad, especially when it’s linked with meritocracy.
So, we’ve established that the South was fighting for slavery and nothing else (other than their own selfish intersts) and that slavery was wrong (pretty much no one argues that one, though I’m sure there’s someone). Don’t worry, someone somewhere will figure out how to twist this into something it isn’t. I’m not sure if it’s something in the water down there or what, but they all seem to think this way, even when they realize that they look silly to everyone else.
“they all seem to think this way”
No, “they” don’t all think this way. It is just a few but they are loudmouths and they seem to think that they are clever.
It is fun to poke them with a stick since they are so predictable. It has been a while since I have heard a new argument from one of them.
There is a movement afoot in Hollywood to take historical bad guys and make them die fantasy deaths a la Inglorious Basterds or to take historical good guys and turn them into ridiculous super heros.
At the same time Hollywood produces movies that denigrate a generation of heros who live among us because a war began that they didn’t agree with by a former President whom they despise.
I see a lot of dissociation from the real world going on here and with this Lincoln movie, it has become a parody of itself.
I just had an idea for a sequwl, how about Adolph Hitler, Vampire Hunter. There seem to be lot of you who would be standing in line for that. Two comparable historical figures like that, it would be a logical sequel.
“The South deserved its chance to be free.”
No it didn’t. It had an unjust end and chose unjust means. The crime against humanity of starting an unjust war for the purpose of preserving another crime against humanity.
The Federal government neither claimed nor employed any powers to suppress the rebellion it didn’t constitutionally have, neither did it claim any such before the war which would justify the South’s actions.
The CSA has no leg to stand on, neither do it’s apologists. There’s no excuse for you.
The South deserved to go its own way just as much as the 13 Colonies did.
And remember, before you continue to denigrate the South for slavery, the institution also had existed in the north for a very long period of time prior to the industrial revolution – and the US Constitution specifically endorsed the practice.
It was legal AND constitutional. Not moral – but definitely not something ol Abe had the legal authority to end. There is also plenty of evidence that it was a practice that was nearing its end, just as it was everywhere else in the western hemisphere where the practice was ended peacefully.
The South had every right to attempt secession, and they did not commit treason.
Scott conveniently forgets that the Constitution had to address slavery as it did, or it never would have been ratified and the US would have failed under the Articles of Confederation that had been in force at the time the Constitution was drafted.
Scott conveniently forgets that the North, once having swallowed this bitter pill, took means and measures to outlaw slavery through a gradual process. This process would have worked, too, had the South not insisted upon keeping the “peculiar institution” of treating human beings as chattel.
That’s okay, Scott. Keep playing the “moral equivalency” card, too. Oh, and do be sure to whine about “innocent civilians” getting “murdered” by the North, too. After all, the inherently barbaric practice known as war must be fought as civilized as possible, because we don’t really want to defend the principle that all men were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Correct?
States’ rights! (to travel with and keep slaves in any state in the Union)
The War of Northern Aggression! (to abolish a fundamentally unjust institution which the South demanded to keep at all costs)
The Constitution made it legal! (initially because the South demanded that slavery be made legal as a condition of ratification)
Gee Tom, when you put it like that it almost sounds like the other states negotiated in bad faith……
Not even slightly.
The Founder’s intentions for slavery were that it gradually be extinguished, and that the extinguishment be enacted in law. They wanted the slave codes to be done away with*.
The North gradually put that into effect, and the did the opposite–in that manner, the treason of the South began the instant they signed on to the constitution, the North was keeping faith.
*Well, the Founders at the time of the Founding. The two faced Jefferson later grew to like slavery quite a lot, and openly too. Go figure, he founded the Democrats.
So the north signed an agreement allowing slavery to continue with the notion they would simply get rid of it later after the Southern states had signed on to the agreement?
You do realize this just reinforces my somewhat sarcastic suggestion that the north negotiated in bad faith, right?
You really aren’t very good at this, but do please keep digging that hole you’re standing in!
No, I am stating the truth the Founder’s wanted slavery dealt with by doing away with it gradually. The North did that, the South did the opposite.
And if you wanted to support your argument, you’d be able to show how the North did anything which was unconstitutional to suppress slavery in the South, prior to the war.
I’ve not read the novel or seen the movie, but from reviews of both, I believe that the story might offer a decent dose of amusement if one simply turns off one’s discernment and enjoys it for what it is–fantasy fiction. In reading the comments here, I’ve also derived a certain amount of amusement (in a sad and regretful sort of way) from this virulent resurrection of the ancient, tired North vs. South argument that seems much more derived from fiction and folklore and political partisanship than from history.
As an author and historian who has researched and written about the conflict, what forces created it, and what resulted from it, I’ll add my two cents.
Just about every criticism made about the Confederacy by Union advocates is true; just about every criticism made about the Union by Confederate advocates is true. Both sections of the nation perpetrated great evils against certain sections of the population before, during, and after the war. Neither side was in the right, and yet both of them were, because they fought, for the most part, for solid ideals and to defend their homes.
The Civil War was one of the greatest calamities in history, one of the greatest injustices inflicted by a nation upon itself. It was also the crucible in which an actual, coherent nation was formed from a loose confederation of states. It destroyed much that was good and unleashed a number of lingering evils, and yet it also destroyed much (more than just chattel slavery) that was evil.
There were great men who fought on both sides–great men who often had great flaws. The flaws do not lessen their achievements, but instead highlight them.
Abraham Lincoln–arguably the greatest of them–prosecuted the war for one reason only–to preserve the Union. He didn’t do it to end the evils of slavery, and he didn’t do it to preserve the unfair advantages of the unscrupulous Northern industrialists. He prosecuted that war in the only way that one can do so–ruthlessly. To try to turn him–or Lee, or Grant, or any of them, down to the lowest-ranker in either army–into a saint is to deny the significance of his final acheivement. He preserved the Union.
He damned near shredded the Constitution to do it, but he did it. His intent was remedy the damage he’d done, both to civil liberties and the physical structure of the Southern states, once the emergency was over. He intended to bring the former rebels back into the family, to welcome them as prodigal brothers, to forgive all. He would no more consider the Southerners traitors or use that term for them than Lee would call the Union troops he faced “the enemy.”
He didn’t get that chance. The Radical Republicans who took (in what amounted to a coup against Andrew Johnson) after Lincoln’s assassination by that wretched actor used the Reconstruction to grind the South’s face into the mud, treating Lincoln’s prodigal brothers with the contempt of the conquerer for the conquered. They abrogated signed treaties, they instituted unConstitutional policies using powers Lincoln had given them for the duration of the war for a full seven years after the war’s end. The policies they established destroyed any chance of a peaceful and productive relationship between former slaves and former Confederates and led directly to the development of the harsh, segregationist Jim Crow society that followed Reconstruction and perniciously persisted for over a century.
Lincoln, were he able to see it, might be amused by this fantastical, fictional film–but he’d shake his head in sorrow if he heard modern Americans arguing with anger (and a complete lack of historical understanding) about a war that took place 150 years ago. He’d be sickened by the use of the word “treason” by advocates of either side.
As a Texan, had I been there, I would have only partially agreed with the great Sam Houston. I’d have agreed with former Texas Ranger Rip Ford on his reasons for secession–foremost, the Union had absolutely refused to fulfill its agreement to provide frontier defense, which was Ford’s primary reason for backing the annexation of Texas into the Union. I’d have backed former Texas Ranger Noah Smithwick’s plea to both Houston and Ford, that Texas raise the Lone Star flag and declare the Republic once more (as was its right according to the terms of annexation), accept the offer of alliance and assistance from the British Empire, and reject both the Confederacy and the Union.
Had Texas remained neutral, the Civil War would have lasted about two years. Texas sent a larger per-capita percentage of its male population to war than did any other state in the Confederacy–and although almost all of them went to fight in the east. Without Hood’s Brigade, Lee would not have been able to hold the line. Without Rip Ford’s conduit to a Mexican port, Confederates would not have been able to run its produce to the British and French ships that not only provided cash and manufactured goods but arms (Enfields) and ammunition for the Confederacy.
It was an unnecessary war for Texans, and we should have stayed out of it. It was an unnecessary war for the rest of the nation as well–until it became necessary for both sides, once common sense was murdered by people who should have known better. The best way to look back on it is through the lens of common sense, rejecting the kind of emotion, monolithic mindsets, and fictional misconceptions that let to it becoming necessary.
“When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.” – Arthur Ponsonby
“It’s often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that’s a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.” – L. Neil Smith
Damn! Now my curiousity is aroused enough that I gotta go find some of your books and read them! Very clever of you….lol….
While I may feel the need to quibble over what state provided the most material assistance to the Confederacy (for instance, such as how much of the Confederate army and subsequent casualties were North Carolinians), you bring up interesting points regarding the importance of Texas in that conflict as well as how to view the major leaders of both sides.
On a (slightly) more serious note, I’ve been thinking about the arguments back and forth here and have drawn what I believe is an interesting conclusion as to how each side views the subject.
The northern sympathizers are arguing morality, the Southern sympathizers are arguing legality.
Morally, there is no defense of slavery that works. On the other hand, it was perfectly legal and had been for centuries up to that time – and the Southern states were arguing legalities in their leaving the union.
I also believe this is why there is no contradiction in a gentleman of the stature of General Lee in supporting both the end of slavery as well as prosecuting a war for Southern independence.
As long as both the legal as well as moral sides of the issue are not given equal validity, I don’t believe either side will ever agree on anything regarding that war.
“The northern sympathizers are arguing morality, the Southern sympathizers are arguing legality.”
No, the North’s supporters are in the happy position of holding all the cards. There is no legal way to secede absent an amendment authorizing it, which is not what the South tried, neither are there any crimes against the South committed by the North in violation of the constitution to relieve the South of any a allegiance to the Founders, or their revolution, or the constitution.
The CSA and it’s adherents have no excuse.
Actually, the idea of secession predates the CSA, with even certain founding fathers suggesting it was legitimate – and I believe at one time certain New England area states threatened to go through with themselves in earlier decades.
The Declaration of Independence set out the legal basis that bonds with even legitimate government can be severed for legitimate reasons, so for the Founding Fathers to have drafted a document that would never allow for secession is an argument with little rational basis – especially when some of those same Founding Fathers wrote approvingly of the idea.
Then there is the US Constitution itself. The Founding Fathers spoke deliberately of a limited government of enumerated powers – and to put the final cross on the “T” and dot on the “i” they added the 9th and 10th amendments specifically stating powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved to the states and to the people.
Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government specifically given power to force a state to remain within the union. On the other hand, powers not enumerated – and the Southern states WERE asserting their power to secede under those amendments – were not expressly forbidden the states.
Which is probably why Lincoln and his ilk never dared allow the issue to go before a court – they could very well have lost!
No one here has suggested the idea of secession originated with the CSA, they’re just the evil idiots who actually did it.
The DoI is a list of grievances and the assertion those grievances make secession a moral imperative. It is not and does not pretend to be a legal document. Are you pretending that? And certainly the Founders considered secession possible, however they referred to the Union as Perpetual and the on;y mechanism in the Constitution to permit it is Amendment.
“The Founding Fathers spoke deliberately of a limited government of enumerated powers – and to put the final cross on the “T” and dot on the “i” they added the 9th and 10th amendments specifically stating powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved to the states and to the people.”
And the power to use the military to enforce the laws made pursuant to the enumerated powers is right in the document, as is the supremacy clause–in the same constitution the Founders wrote and the southern states signed on to. The 9th and 10th do not rescind any part of the rest of the document.
You don’t know the law you claim I don’t.
Any case Lincoln brought before Chief Justice Roger B.Tanney, author of the Dred Scott Decision, he would have lost. He was America’s worst Chief Justice until Earl Warren.
While it is hard to fault President James K.Polk because his plate was pretty full, it would have been a true favor to later generations if he had hanged Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and the rest of the New England transcendentalists for advocating secession during the War With Mexico. If nothing else it would have saved untold numbers of high school students from having to read “Walden”.
Interesting analysis, Scott, re moral vs. legal.
“Neither side was in the right, and yet both of them were, because they fought, for the most part, for solid ideals and to defend their homes.”
Your brand sir, of moral relativism is saddening and pathetic.
Mr. Perkins, thank you for supplying us with a perfect example of that “monolithic thinking” approach to history that I mentioned.
Thanks for an interesting and coherent post. About the movie I saw it tonight and was entertained. The only thing evil in the movie were the vampires!
Scott and Mike, you two are pathetic
If you see a flaw or inaccuracies in my statements, feel free to point them out.
For those commenters who have said that the Civil War was not about slavery -
In the secession documents of just 3 (Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia) of the seceding states themselves slavery/slaveholding/slaves was mentioned an astounding 27 times.
http://www.academicamerican.com/expansioncw/civilwar/docs/secessiondocuments.html
You, on purpose, omit that slavery was becoming less a matter of cheap labor and more of a social and moral problem for the South. Southerners generally weren’t slaveowners but they saw the impossibility of assimilation if the slaves were freed. They were right about that. Most likely after mechanization slavery would have ended without a war and the ex-slaves shipped back to Africa or some other place that wuold take them.
Actually the example history gives is that mechanization can make slavery much more profitable–the cotton gin. But you are right as far you go, the CSA would not have given up slavery for generations because of their sinful pride.
It defined them, they needed.
“needed” != “needed it”
If you check, I believe you will find that the references to slavery are always within the context of obligations under the constitution, and the responsibilities that all parties were obliged to undertake as a condition of signing on to that same constitution.
Adherence to the obligations as set forth in that document was a condition for all states for originally joining the union.
When elements of that agreement among the states were ignored, then it undermined the whole of the agreement – which was the crux of the state’s rights argument by the Southern states.
Doesn’t matter if it was slavery or that the president was required each morning to eat a breakfast of eggs while standing on his head – there were obligations each state as well as the federal government were required to uphold as a condition of joining that union.
The issue of slavery was an easy example to point to as northern states had passed laws – directly in contradiction of the constitution – that slaves would not be returned. The federal government likewise ceased to enforce this provision.
That breached the contract.
As I noted earlier, it could have been that the president refused to eat eggs for breakfast while standing on his head – it didn’t matter as it still constituted a breach of the contract.
That is why the issue was state’s rights, not slavery. Slavery was just one obvious example of how the contract between the states and federal government had been breached, but it was not the only issue. Texas, for instance, decided to include border security with Mexico as a complaint.
“When elements of that agreement among the states were ignored, then it undermined the whole of the agreement – which was the crux of the state’s rights argument by the Southern states.”
Except no elements of that agreement were ignored. The CSA existed because they feared staying in the Union would mean that later amendments–which themselves would be perfectly constitutional–would undermine their peculiar institution. They were right, but instead of complying with the Founders overall wishes that slavery be let to whither away, they wanted to preserve it by committing the crime of treason and unilaterally claiming with no basis in law that it no longer applied to them.
“The issue of slavery was an easy example to point to as northern states had passed laws – directly in contradiction of the constitution – that slaves would not be returned.”
Bullshit. The problem was that northern juries were refusing to convict black persons who slave hunter claimed were slaves, of being thieves of themselves. Those juries were acting in their perfectly constitutional capacity in refusing such convictions, the slavers had no basis for complaining about it. What the Supreme Court claimed in Dred Scot made the war inevitable–Tawney claimed there was no free soil in the United States, and that slaves were slaves no matter where they went in the US. This is in direct contradiction to the Constitution, unlike the actions of Northern juries. It meant that the US as a whole must de facto develop a federal slave code. That was the violation of the constitution by slaveholding interests which made the North so willing to crush the vile confederates.
“That is why the issue was state’s rights, not slavery. ”
Dred Scott is why the whole issue was ultimately over slavery for both sides just as the CSA’s leaders themselves proclaimed.
Wow…so you are claiming state laws regarding slaves found in free states superceded federal law and the Constitution?
See, this is why I commented earlier that those of us who sympathize with the South are arguing law. The law was not on the side of the north.
You are actually arguing that the South was concerned over constitutional amendments – which had not even been passed or even proposed at that point!
About as ridiculous as the rest of your arguments……
Not at all. I am saying that right of juries to find innocence and nullify the law is perfectly constitutional, as you should know–you’re such a scholar.
The constitution had no power to compel a state to pass or enforce a slave code. It has no power to compel a guilty verdict in a theft trial when the accused is supposedly the stolen property.
It’s you who have no idea what the law is. The most the constitution could compel the states or a person to do was to go through the motions of enforcing a Fugitive Slave Act. It had no power to compel a conviction.
“You are actually arguing that the South was concerned over constitutional amendments – which had not even been passed or even proposed at that point!”
They certainly were, and they had both been proposed and discussed–not I think adopted by any number of states, but I haven’t claimed that have I?
Would you mind pointing out to me the article and section in the US Constitution that mandates free states return escaped slaves to their owners in slave states?
I realize that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 requires that but if we are going to talk about states rights it seems that the Fugitive Slave Act is a pretty serious infringement on the rights of free states to decide whether or not they want slavery within their borders.
That’s an easy one.
Article IV, Section 1.
And there is also, as you have admitted yourself, the Fugitive Slave Act.
By breaking the contract, and refusing to enforce the provisions of the Constitution, the federal government and the northern states broke the agreement.
Again, I am not defending slavery itself – simply pointing out that from a legal standpoint the Southern states were correct.
Full faith and credit? That is your answer? You mean that when the Massachusetts legislature decided to allow same sex marriage, that imposed an obligation on every other state and territory in the United States to recognize those marriages?
Kind of knocks a hole in your contention that you care anything about federalism or states rights.
Why should I spend $12 and waste 2 hours of my life on this?
Until we stop saying that this is “fun,” Bollywood will continue to serve up this garbage.
I agree, not worth the time to read through the comments as some are quite irrational….oh wait – you were referring to the movie!?!
Lol…..
This film is from Hollywood, not Bollywood. You can tell because “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter” does not have song and dance numbers every ten minutes regardless of what else is going on in the movie.
Although, maybe in the sequel…
Actually; This is the closest Obama comes to Lincoln’s likeness.
If Obama and the Democrat Congress could harvest your organs or bodily fluids for cash, we’d all be in a cooler awaiting the cadaver refinery described in the ObamaCare Bill.
There’ll be a tax on all flatulence and praying.
Your attention is directed to “The Jigsaw Man” by Larry Niven, from the Dangerous Visions anthology. You’re welcome.
What? Somebody stole my idea years ago?
General Sherman presented his plans to General Grant for a scorched earth policy against the South. General Grant knew precisely what Sherman intended to do – and approved the plan.
Were such a tactic to be employed today, Sherman would face a charges of committing war crimes.
really? so they didn’t do scorched earth in WWII?
Perhaps you can point out for us the already defeated city the allies burned to the ground?
Actually, the nazis did when they invaded the USSR, but to my knowledge Eisenhower never authorized the deliberate targeting and destruction of non-combatant civilian homes as he marched his armies across Europe while fighting the retreating Germans, nor did he authorize actions he knew would result in the starvation and death of those civilians as he traveled through the area.
Now, if you have a specific example where he issued orders to the contrary, please share with the rest of us.
Never claimed Eisenhower did, and yet, there was Dresden.
And a suspicious large number of Germans died of want and exposure in Western allied POW camps, to say nothing of Eastern ones. I suppose we hadn’t yet decided to reject Morganthau’s plan.
Slavery was the major issue driving the civil war. Other differences could have been resolved peacefully. Most of the resolutions to secede from the Union passed by narrow votes. The confederacy was an evil society, unless you don’t consider taking 8-10 year old children away from their parents and selling them on the block as evil.
When the South was at the end of their manpower and considered arming slaves in exchange for their freedom confederate Major General Howell Cobb wrote against arming slaves saying: “The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” and Virginia Senator R.M.T. Hunter, president pro-tempore of the Confederate Senate said: “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?”
Robert E Lee was respected and admired by all sides and is decision not to fight against the confederacy is tragically understandable given his personal concerns but he choose to fight for an evil cause. In spite of how he may have felt about slavery he knew he was fighting to preserve the right of others to own men as slaves.
Lee’s successes may have extended the war by two years. It prevented any compromises that could have led to a negotiated settlement. By the time the North started to prevail the cost of the war was too high for a political settlement. The last two years of the war ended up with the South occupied by enemy troops and devastated of life and property. Where both sides are determined to win it was the only end possible in the face of fanatical resistance,just like Nazi Germany
No need to defend morality of slavery IMO as some 90% or so of the citizens of the CSA never owned slaves, and even Lincoln. In earlier and more honest moments stated ended slavery was not his goal in starting a war.
Then you have the riots that occurred in northern cities where blacks were lynched from streetlights when it was first suggested that ending slavery should be a goal of that war. How evil does that make the northerners?
Then there is the question – if slavery is evil (and it IS), exactly how evil is it to kill almost 1/3 of the fighting age male population of the South? Especially when the age ranges down to the mid teens?
Then there is the whole destruction of the US Constitution in the process, an effect that is still with us long after that war ended…..
Can you even imagine something like Kelo vs City of New London even making it to the SCOTUS in the time of the Founding Fathers? Obamacre? The nation has strayed far from its constitutional roots – and it all goes back to Lincoln.
“exactly how evil is it to kill almost 1/3 of the fighting age male population of the South? Especially when the age ranges down to the mid teens?”
Not evil at all. They were under arms and active in a war against the United States.
It was for the most part entirely the choice of the southern male population to take up arms in rebellion against the legally constituted government of the United States. Even those who were conscripted had the option of surrender or desertion as tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers did. Samuel Clemons was one of the more famous deserters from the Confederate army. After deserting he “lit out for the territories” and wound up in Nevada.
The evil ones were the people who sent children out to fight and die long after the eventual outcome of the War Against the Rebellion was known to anybody with a functional intellect.
It should become as impossible in polite company, to express sympathy either for the goals or means of the Confederacy, as to express sympathy either with Lenin or Hitler, or among certain Yankee circles circa 1775, as to admit of a preference for the arbitrary rule of George III.
The question to Mike and Scott is, why do you adhere to any of this nation’s enemies, least of all those who came closer than any to it’s destruction?
Interesting…..not satisfied that everyone doesn’t share your illogical aggrandizement of America’s first dictator, you now show your true colors even more brightly by advocating dissenting speech you disagree with be stifled…..
And you question the patriotism of others?!?
Of course, on the other hand I guess I am flattered. I’ve obviously done such a good job debunking your sorry pathetic excuse of a defense of Lincoln that you prefer me and those like me be silenced rather than answer the critiisms being leveled at your false idol.
I’ll take that compliment any day of the week and twice on Sunday!
One of the great joys of the internet is the ability to completely ignore the arguments of others, pretend they haven’t answered your points and simply declare victory in an argument whether you’ve earned it or not. And you, Scott, are truly enjoying yourself.
Actually, you are correct in that I have quite thoroughly enjoyed myself, though to be honest it has become a bit boring at this point. I still derive a certain amount of pleasure in knowing I have pi$$ed off certain individuals in the process however – though to be honest that wasn’t my original intent.
If you disagree with me, that’s fine too. Go stand in the corner with the guy advocating restrictions on free speech….
It’s wonderful how you can’t make a post without showing your inability to comprehend simple things, or tell a lie in deflection. I’m saying you should be as shamed to share your opinion as the equally asshat’ed Fred Phelps is.
And you claim I want to restrict your first amendment rights.
And you support the Confederacy.
That fits.
You’re crazy.
Ha! I’m a liar???
Project much in the real world little man?
Then again, you’ve now descended to name calling, which is just another clear sign of just how badly you feel you’ve lost the discussion here.
I love it!
So, I review a popcorn film about Abe Lincoln and a civil war breaks out in the comments. Heh.
Any time Abe Lincoln or the Civil War is mentioned, even odds someone will come out to say the rebellion was a fine thing.
Dixie needs to be driven down, it was evil even for it’s time.
Quoting the oh so rational Tom Perkins – “Dixie needs to be driven down, it was evil even for it’s time.”
Yeah, this statement about sums up your bigotry towards the South, and reflects both a genuine animosity as well as incredib le stupidity and ignorance of the region all at the same time.
You and your ilk argue hatefully against the concept of secession – yet you express nothing but contempt for that same South that you don’t want to ever leave!
Kind of like being in a marriage where you hate your spouse, are abusive towards them, but refuse to divorce them or let them leave.
Just how f%cking stupid is that?
Get out of my brain Bryan Preston.