The American Civil War

[crazybikerme]

Olivia De-Havilland. (GWTW)

Vivienne Leigh. (GWTW)

Lesley Ann Down. (North & South)

Just can't think of a pretty Yankee lady..........................

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Hilts

Olivia De-Havilland. (GWTW)

Vivienne Leigh. (GWTW)

Lesley Ann Down. (North & South)

Just can't think of a pretty Yankee lady..........................

Anne Bancroft: Incident at St Albans?

Elizabeth Taylor & June Allyson: Little Women (1949)?*

Constance Towers in The Horse Soldiers counts as neutral I think, because she initially roots gung ho for the Confederacy but sees plenty enough of what war is really about by being a Union prisoner, loses her slave, Louki (palyed by Althea Gibson) to friendly fire. I was strangely touched by the real love she felt for the slave she had always known all her life and how deeply she mourned her. By the end, she has given up caring who wins and who loses and has grasped that everyone's a loser in a civil war.

The Horse Soldiers is my favourite American Civil War film. It's a genuinely heart-rending drama which we mainly see from the Union side since we are travelling with John Wayne and George Kennedy's Union cavalry regiments through Confederate "enemy" territory. But it drives home the horror and the waste of the war and the special ugliness of it being a civil war in which enemies are also friends, who don't really even have the comfort blanket of hating one another. That scene of the Confederates charging out of the Vicksburg train at Newton's Station and being wiped out is harrowing; even the Union cavalry find it a repulsive slaughter and take pity on the Reb wounded, doing everything for them that they can. John Wayne was the strong silent stereotype personified but his face as he silently defies the reproach in the eyes of Robert Mitchum's doctor and of Constance Towers' Southern Belle amateur spy and prisoner is a great piece of acting. Colonel Marlowe didn't like it either, but he did it anyway because that what you do in a war when its either them or you. Even decades after it was filmed, that scene still shocks.

*Liz Taylor was 17 when she made this film, so no photos please.

[Mal Hombre]

Ah Scounds, Great review of a great film but Marlowes co-commander is played by Willis Bouchey and the doctor is William Holden.

[keefriff]

Thanks for sticking up for us Yankees Scoundrel. I knew there was some pretty Northerners out there but all I could keep thinking of was Mary Todd Lincoln.

I wanted to chime in on this thread becuase it is something that I am very interested in. I don't want to sound like a boor or a know it all but I have read quite a few books on the American Civil War and have gone on three extensive vacations to visit battlefields throughout the South. It is something that I am very passionate about. Thanks to DTravel for posting the great pics from Gettysburg. This is a place that all Americans should visit to see the battlefield and to get a better understanding of the sacrifice that so many men, on both sides, made in this battle. The US Park Service does an excellent job of preserving the site as well as educating the public about the battle and also it's affect on the town of Gettysburg. One of the great things about this area of the US is that you can visit many significant battle sites because of their close proximaty to each other. Sharpsburg VA, Fredrick, MD, Bull Run, Antietem, Fredricksburg, Seven Days, Richmond and the Wilderness battlefields are all within a 150 (estimate) mile radius. Richmond VA has some really good museums about the war including one housed in the factory of the legendary Tredegar Iron Works. In a week you can visit some of the most important sites in PA, VA and MD. It is well worth it.

I will find some of my pics from these trips and post them as well.

I would love to keep this thread going and to talk about people's travels or their favorite personalities from the War or whatever. Like I said, I'm a little passionate about it.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

Ah Scounds, Great review of a great film but Marlowes co-commander is played by Willis Bouchey and the doctor is William Holden.

This is what happens when I'm doing too many things at once and don't take time out to google it. Holden and Mitchum: its not the first time by any means I've mixed those two up in my head. At least I remembered Constance Tower's the spitfire lady Reb who learned to wish for peace, not war. She's worth remembering.

[Ace1965]

Thanks for those great pictures DTravel. Especially the one with the Alabama monument. I would really like to get up there and tour Gettysburg. It's about a two day drive from here. Can you see everything in a day or two?

There has been a real concern in this country about preserving historic Civil War sites. There is a proposal to build a casino only one half of a mile away from Gettysburg Memorial Battlefield. Here is the story.

http://www.preservationnation.org/ta...ettysburg.html

Other sites are also in trouble. Some sites have vacant property on them and need to be reclaimed. On the site of The Battle of Iuka, Mississippi there are no monuments or plaques. I have been by there and all that is there is an abandoned gas station and motel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iuka

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by Ace1965

Thanks for those great pictures DTravel. Especially the one with the Alabama monument. I would really like to get up there and tour Gettysburg. It's about a two day drive from here. Can you see everything in a day or two?

I did my tour of the battlefield in one day. A long day but it can be done. There is a self-guided driving tour that you can follow, which is what I did.

A personal observation, every year or two someone at Gettysburg finds another pair of musket rounds that fused together after impacting in mid-air going opposite directions. Think about the odds of that happening even once and the volume of fire necessary for it to happen multiple times. Then think again about the accounts of men leaning forward holding their hats as they advance.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

[knobby109]

I wonder if the double rounds were in fact the result of a soldier reloading in a panic and ramming home two musket balls.It's well documented that this sort of thing happened.

[otiscleotus]

In his book Rebel Private: Front and Rear, William A. Fletcher gives a stunning account of his part in the battle of Gettysburg while a member of Hood's Texas brigade at the base of Little Round Top.

Fletcher did not have much of an education so his prose is fairly difficult to read, but he was an exceptionally intelligent individual and his accounts of his battles, marches, wounds, POW time and escape are one of the better accounts I've read by those that were in the war. I only wish that the "afterward" would have been used as a preface or forward in the book to give a better background on this unique individual.

In think it was in the Time-Life picture book on the battle that there is a quote from a union soldier that was being sent up as a reinforcement to Little Round Top on the total hell he saw unfolding when he got to a point where he could see the slope below, the fighting raging in the wheatfield area and then down along Cemetery Ridge and the rising smoke enveloping the fighting beyond that.

In the days after that battle the government also put up a fairly effective media & civilian blockade around the area of the battle as the carnage had been so great. If you're familiar with the heat and humidity in that area in July, add in the tens of thousands of horses and mules that were used by the armies, the few, narrow, unpaved roads and trails they used to move on, you can understand that it wasn't that nice of a place to be while the mess left there was being cleaned up.

[otiscleotus]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

Anne Bancroft: Incident at St Albans?

Elizabeth Taylor & June Allyson: Little Women (1949)?*

Constance Towers in The Horse Soldiers counts as neutral I think, because she initially roots gung ho for the Confederacy but sees plenty enough of what war is really about by being a Union prisoner, loses her slave Althea to friendly fire (I was strangely touched by the real love she felt for the slave she had always known all her life and how deeply she mourned her). By the end, she has given up caring who wins and who loses and grasped that everyone's a loser in a civil war...

*Liz Taylor was 17 when she made this film, so no photos please.

One of the things that makes producing a movie involving this time period difficult to accurately depict is the general unhealthy state and poor diet of the people that were actually involved. Even with the older movies it always bugs me that they have full sets of nice white straight teeth. And try to find enough young men in the US today that are thin enough to make a realistic looking regiment or two for the larger battle scenes.