Andersonville DVD - Anyone seen it?

[John Kepler]

Comparing Fort Pillow with Andersonville is comparing "apples and oranges." An unfortunate aspect of EVERY war is that, in some cases, enemy prisoners of the side that lost the battle have been massacred.

No , it isn't! Ft. Pillow is the DIRECT reason for Andersonville! The Confederate government refused to exchange captured Federal black troops, placing them again in bondage, and in cases like Ft. Pillow...quite deliberately killed the black troops outright, so no more exchanges until and unless it could be done on "color-blind" lines. The Confederates refused, and Andersonville was the result....apples-to-apples, cause and effect.

As for the rest. You think a J-DAM that targets the water, sewer, and power systems of a large city isn't going to "effect civilians"? How about a fire-bomb raid a`la Dresden or Tokyo? Do you actually think that a Confederate handing a Pennsylvania farmer a receipt redeemable in Richmond in script that even the issuing government knew wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, was anything other than out-and-out horse theft? How about a nuke? "War is all hell, you cannot change it!" Uncle Billy simply knew his job a lot better than Jeff Davis, and apparently you!

[John Kepler]

I would also like to point out that in 1863 when Lee's Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign; the property of Pennsylvania civilians was respected.

You mean Jubal Early DIDN'T burn Chambersburg, PA in 1864? How about the Commando Raid/burning of St. Albans, VT? The attempt to burn NYC? The attempted capture of the USS Michigan to free POW's on Johnson's Island to burn and destroy Northern cities by hijacking the SS Philo Parsons, terrorizing the captured CIVILIAN passengers and crew, doing likewise to the SS Island Queen, and eventually looting and burning both vessels (the commander, John Y. Beall was later captured, tried, convicted and hung for murder and piracy in Feb. 1865!)? If you're trying to make a point, you'd best keep ALL the facts straight!

[John Kepler]

He deserved his fate and was not the victim of a judicial lynching as was the case with Wirtz.

Judicial lynching? Heinrich Hartmann Wirz' (note the correct spelling) only defense was that he was "just following orders"! That line didn't work at Nuremberg either!

[Ken The Kanuck]

Gentlemen please, do not fight the civil all over again. It was destructive enough the first time around to our great southern nieghbours Being that my interest is one of a historical bent I most appreciate the knowledge you fellows have and are willing to share. I would suspect that many Americans too appreciate the fruits of your knowledge. For there are many of us on both sides of the border who can learn more of our histories.

Now I found the book Andersonville a very good read, I believe that it was written less than a 100 years after the conflict. Now did the author have a slant? I would certainly expect so, for we all do. But it was window to me on a section of the civil war which I was not aware of. I knew that conditions were bad in POW camps in both the North and the South.

What were the reasons? Why were the exchanges halted? I would have to think that an intelligent man or men could quickly figure out that if you are blockading and attempting to starve a population into submission then the people with the least value would be hit the hardest. So in fact the Northern Generals must of known what they were doing to thier own captured soldiers. But in the book the local farmers attempted to give the prisoners food and were not allowed to do this.

As in all conflicts there seems to be enough guilt to go around.

One aspect of the civil war which I find interesting is the politics which led to the war. To a furriener such as myself it would seem that both sides forgot about the great principles which were used to create the United States of America.

But as I said I am only learning and certainly stand to be corrected. So I appreciate hearing from both sides and I thank-you for sharing your knowledge.

KTK
OFC

[JDBoardman]

Mr. Kepler:

Your information about Ft. Pillow is, unfortunately, based on a slander that has been perpetuated for nigh on to a century now to debase Nathan Bedford Forrest. Yes, he was a slave trader before the war. Yes, he was one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. No! he did not massacre prisoners at Ft Pillow.

The facts are that Ft. Pillow was surrounded, and the Union gunboats were unable to provide effective fire to relieve the garrison. Major Bradford was given the opportunity for surrender, and after requesting an hour for consultation (Forrest granted twenty minutes), refused to surrender. The Confederates then overran the fortifications. In the ensuing rout, all but 63 of the black troopers were killed.

Ft. Pillow was not the reason for the deplorable conditions at Andersonville, they were the direct result of U.S. Grant's decision to halt all prisoner exchanges because the care and feeding of POWs would present a greater burden on the Cobnfederacy than on the Union. And as was pointed out earlier, the casualty rate at Union POW camps was higher than at Andersonville. Genreal Grant, known among even his own troops as "Butcher Grant" used his troops as expendable cannon fodder and cared little for their lives as evidenced by his casualty rates. He is revered in the North only because he was the ONLY Union general who was successful at defeating an outnumbered, outequipped foe. George MaClelland had as many troops at his disposal, but was unwilling to sacrifice them in wholesale fashion as was Grant. Burnsides and Hooker were both incompetants, and Sherman was the Union version of Lt. Col Banastre Tarleton (the model for Mel Gibson's antagonist Col. Tavington in The Patriot).

The issue is that no one is trying to paint Andersonville as a humane, kindly place - it wasn't; it was a hellhole. But it also was typical of the conditions faced at ALL POW camps during the War Between the States. Political Correctness aside, Wirtz no more deserved hanging than Dr. Mudd deserved imprisionment for treating John Wilkes Booth's broken leg. The North treated the South as a conquered province, and many, many in the North extracted every ounce of revenge they could for the South's "uppity attitude" in having even thought that they were entitled to go their own way.

Now that that has been said, I suspect that I, along with Mr. Kepler and most other members of this board would find ourselves on the same side should the situation in this Country further deteriorate and it once more become necessary to restore the Constitution by force of arms (God Forbid!). I respect his passion and knowledge, but I disagree with his interpretation of some of the history. I doubt I will be able to convince him of thr righteousness of my position any more than he will convince me that Southerners were evil incarnate. We will simply agree to disagree, and go forward to make this the best country that we can, each in our own way. As Santayana said, "he who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it"

[John Kepler]

Ken...you wanted some "search for meaning"? I cannot write it adequately....that was done more than 50 years ago by a news reporter turned historian in some of the most poignant paragraphs ever written in the language.

"In front of them was the wide gentle valley of the shadow of death, brimming now with soft autumn sunlight, and behind them the flags waved lazily about the speakers' stand and the voice droned on, building up toward a literary climax. The valley was a mile wide, and there was the rolling ground where the Rebel guns had been ranked, and on the crest of the ridge was the space where a girlish artillery lieutenant had had a sergeant hold him up while he called for the last round of canister, the ground where the file closers had gripped hands and dug in their heels to hold a wavering line together, the place where the noise of men desperately fighting had been heard as a great mournful roar; and the voice went on, and the governors looked dignified, and the veterans by the trees looked about them and saw again the fury and the smoke and the killing.

This was the valley of dry bones, waiting for the word, which might or might not come in rhythmic prose that began by describing the customs of ancient Athens. The bones had lain there in the sun and the rain, and now they were carefully arranged state by state under the new sod. They were the bones of men that exulted in their youth, and some of them had been unstained heros while others had been scamps who pillaged and robbed and ran away when they could, and they had died here, and that was the end of them. They had come here because of angry words and hot passions in which they had not shared. They had come, too, because the drums had rolled and the bands had blared the swinging deceitful tunes that piped men off to battle...three cheers for the red white and blue, here's a long look back at the girl I left behind me, John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave but we go marching on, and Yankee Doodle on his spotted pony rides off into the eternal smokey mist of war.

Back of these men were innumerable long dusty roads reaching to the main streets of a thousand youthful towns and villages where there had been bright flags overhead on the board sidewalks cheering and crying and waving a last good-by. It had seemed once that there was some compelling reason to bring these men here--something so broad that it would encompass all the terrible contradictory manifestations of the country's pain and bewilderment, the riots and the lynchings, the hysterical conspiracies with their oaths written in blood, the hard hand that had been laid upon the countryside, the scramble for riches and the scheming for high place, and the burdens carried by quiet folk who wanted only to live at peace by the faith they used to have.

Perhaps there was a meaning to all of it somewhere. Perhaps everything that the nation was and meant to be had come to a focus here, beyond the graves and the remembered echoes of the guns, and the wreckage of lives that were gone forever. Perhaps the whole of it somehow was greater that the sum of its tragic parts, and perhaps here on this wind-swept hill the thing could be said at last, so that the dry bones of the country's dreams could take on flesh.

The orator finished, and after the applause had died away the tall man in the black frock coat got to his feet, with two little sheets of paper in hand, and he looked out over the valley and began to speak."

Bruce Catton, "The Glory Road"

It simply cannot be synopsised any better.