Re: What kind of person was Stonewall Jackson?

"Michael" <michaelwynn2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:g457bc$536$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Thanks for you reply "Will in New Haven" . I know a little history, but
I
> have much to learn yet. Another scene that bothered me from the film
Gods
> and Generals was when they had Stonewall Jackson crying about the death
of
a
> little girl. And also they had him praying at all sort of times. That
film
> really made me puke.


Can't say about the little girl, but the prayer part is entirely accurate.

Jackson was fiercely religious (iirc, a Northern Ireland Protestant by
descent, so you know what to expect). He even avoided posting letters on
Saturdays lest they be in the post on the Sabbath.



>
> I guess, I would compare the south with apartheid (they had appartheid
there
> untill 1964). Yet unlike apartheid the south is shrouded in
sentimentality
> and myth. Even one of my favorite songs The Band's The Night They Drove
Old
> Dixie Down is full of this feelling. They should be celebrating the fact
> that a great evil has gone from the world. They should have scenes in
movies
> where the brave soldiers are confronted with evil they defended and
which
> show the moral dillemma that resulted. In stead they show Stonewall
Jackson
> praying and crying about little girls like he was some kind of saint.
>



It's simple enough.

The producers needed for the American side to be right. So they had a
teeny
problem with the ACW as _both_ sides there were American, Acccordingly
they
had to make both sides in some way "right" or at least sympathetic.

Your complaint isn't new. If you read Albion W Tourgee's _A Fool's
Errand_,
you will find a comment that the way the southern side is being
romanticised, it won't be long before men will be ashamed to admit that
they
fought for the Union. That book was  written in 1880.


--

Mike Stone - Peterborough, England

Q) In the Roman Civil Wars, why did all the bachelors fight for Sulla?

A) Because they weren't the Marian kind.