Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 7:48:42 GMT -8
Mr. Kung, was McClelland’s supposed superior generalship theoretical? I’m not aware of which actions in the Civil War mark his greatness. He may have been a great tactician. It seems to me the problem Lincoln had with him was to get him to use it.
And if the South preferred McClelland you have to wonder if it isn’t the sort of praise today’s Democrats give to the weakest Republicans. From what I understand, McClelland did an outstanding job forming the army at the start of the war. But apparently he had little wish to use it.
Sheridan’s personal self may be as dubious as many of the Southern generals. But he served a purpose. I was unaware that he was charged with making the Shenandoah valley useless to the rebels until I re-watched the Burns series. He apparently did a very good job cleaning anything useful out of that beautiful stretch of land.
War is hell, as Sherman noted. And it seems to me that Sherman was one of the more honest generals in the war, if only gauging from his quotes.
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Both sides regularly made ill use of their men. Again, for better or for worse, Sherman acknowledged this:
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 28, 2019 8:17:44 GMT -8
Mr. Kung, was McClelland’s supposed superior generalship theoretical? I’m not aware of which actions in the Civil War mark his greatness. He may have been a great tactician. It seems to me the problem Lincoln had with him was to get him to use it.Brad, I have no idea. I am merely quoting what those who fought the civil war said. I certainly trust their judgement more than I do a bunch of Radical Republicans who impeached Andrew Johnson because he was not tyrannical enough in Reconstruction.
And if the South preferred McClelland you have to wonder if it isn’t the sort of praise today’s Democrats give to the weakest Republicans.
It is not the "South" which preferred McClellan, it was two of the highest ranking generals who faced numerous Union commanders during the war that expressed their high regard for him as a general.
I never read anything which would come close to indicating that Lee or Longstreet were similar to today's Democrat scoundrels. And while you may doubt that they were both honorable men, I don't. And I have no doubt what-so-ever that both believed what they said. This is doubly true for Longstreet as after the war he got very involved with Republican politics and became close to many Northern military men, thus would have zero reason to lie about his opinion of McClellan.
Both sides regularly made ill use of their men. Again, for better or for worse, Sherman acknowledged this:
You make one of my points about McClellan for me. He was unlike most other generals in his care of his men. The balance between caring too much about one's men and the willingness to have them slaughtered is a general's dilemma. I doubt that a kind man can be a successful general.
As to Sherman, I couldn't agree more with him, particularly his comments about journalists.
Sherman was one of the better generals of the war. One suspects he went a little crazy because he had the intelligence and foresight to see the logical path the war would take and the means that would be necessary to end it. It cannot have been easy for him. No doubt, he had to steel himself for it and it would not be surprising if he became perhaps harder than he might have wished. Who knows?
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 8:17:44 GMT -8
You can’t read the attitudes of people of the time and not think of Trump and today. The same sort of thought occurred to me. To his credit, Seward was one of many men who eventually realized this was not some country bumpkin. Even Shelby Foote noted that Lincoln (along with Nathan Bedford Forest) was one of two geniuses revealed by the Civil War.
Hindsight is, of course, 20-20. But having had my own sort of “Wargasm” from re-watching the Burns series and reading this book (almost finished), the realization came that the South invigorated and abetted the only force in the world that could have been a threat to their way of life: A riled North.
Lincoln had no intention of abolishing slavery. And even if down the road an amendment was passed to outlaw slavery, that likely would have been decades into the future. Even then, it seems likely provisions would be made to exempt the South as such provisions had always done.
The South present themselves as victims and the North as bullies. But it was the South that was intent on telling everyone in the Union how to live. They were the ones who would not live and left live. The could have very easily lived on as they has always lived while bitching and complaining in the House and Senate.
Jefferson Davis was particularly a kook. Give most of the Confederate generals credit for knowing they were defeated. But Jefferson continued with lunatic dreams of retreating to Texas and starting there again. And if not there, maybe in Mexico. The man struck me as a nut. And as viciously racist as their vice president was, it’s amusing to note that after the war he was re-elected to Congress, sort of a strange return to normal.
The South were rebels from the North’s point of view. Again, I think the South was full of hot-heads who were’t particularly intelligent. Firing on Fort Sumter was the equivalent of the act of a petulant child. But it had horrible repercussions for the South.
That act — much like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — galvanized opinion against this rebellion. Most people up North didn’t give a squat about slavery. But an attack on their country by rebels was something else altogether.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 28, 2019 8:38:29 GMT -8
Shakespeare's "the lady doeth protest too much" comes to mind. Those Southerners, no doubt, had guilty consciences about slavery. The fact that they kept calling it the "peculiar institution" is a clear sign of this.
They also knew they were operating from a weak position. It is common in life for someone who is in a weak position, to puff themselves up and overplay their hand, hoping to bamboozle their opposition.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 28, 2019 9:08:38 GMT -8
One of the great ironies of the War of the Rebellion is that the South rebelled because they feared the federal government was growing too powerful. And in fighting that rebellion, the federal government became a lot more powerful than it had been (and probably more powerful than Lincoln, a Henry Clay Whig, really wanted). As Carl Sandburg observed, the war was fought over a verb. Before the war, it was "the United States are" (as anyone reading the Constitution will see). Afterward, it was "the United States is" instead because it was now a unitary state instead of a collection of sovereign states.
This also shows up in 0ur reference to "states" rather than "provinces", and the legislature as a "Congress" and not a "parliament" or "diet". A Congress (like the Congress of Vienna) is a meeting of sovereign states.
I would agree with KFZ that men such as Lee were indeed honorable men in a difficult situation. Few of them favored secession (I doubt Davis did, actually), but they went with their states. John S. Mosby was such a strong opponent of secession that he expected to fight for the Union even if Virginia seceded. Jubal Early (a delegate to the secession convention from Franklin County) opposed it on the final vote, after Fort Sumter. But in the end, when the state seceded, both ultimately fought for state rather than country -- because the state was their country (and it was their home and that of their friends and family). That's why they were states and not provinces. It was a matter of worldview, not honor.
And as Longstreet pointed out, many northerners shared that worldview. They didn't want their states to secede but quite often would have gone with their states if that had happened. But their states didn't, so they stayed with the Union. There were exceptions, probably none more so than George H. Thomas. He was from a modest planter family in Southampton County, Virginia -- site of Nat Turner's rebellion (he was alive and probably on the scene when it happened). Virginia had given him a ceremonial sword, which he kept at home. His sisters said that if he ever came back, they would use it on him. He never saw them, or his family home, again. And he was never trusted by Northerners despite an exceptional military record. Grant was on the way to replace him, believing Thomas's failure to act as quickly in mid-December was overcaution rather than actual bad weather, when Thomas fought and won an overwhelming victory at Nashville.
Incidentally, there is a story of a secessionist woman in occupied territory who complained about a missing purse or some such. Thomas's men were able to find it and return it to her -- which made her the Confederacy as doomed because they could never hope to defeat such well-disciplined men.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 9:28:32 GMT -8
Economically and culturally, at least in Atlanta the North has won the war. But this is a refrain happening all over the world as any sort of traditional motif gives way to commercialism. I think there are many in the South who are so full of grievance and a sense of victimhood that they see modern Atlanta as the product of them dang Yankees. And they do have a point. But blinded by victimhood and grievance, they (and whether this is a very small or medium group, they exist) don’t see that this isn’t personal. This is happening all over the world as old ways of life give way to Taco Bell franchises and video games. Horwitz has a marvelous section in this book about his time in Atlanta. He goes to visit a laser show at Stone Mountain. The show is a hodgepodge of politically correct pablum, all projected over a base relief of The Confederate trinity (Lee, Jackson, and Davis):
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Post by timothylane on Oct 28, 2019 10:11:56 GMT -8
I've been to Atlanta and even briefly visited the Battle of Atlanta visitor's center with its cyclorama. I would like to have seen more, including the whole cyclorama show. But amazingly, I've never seen nearby Stone Mountain. I've also never seen Mount Rushmore, but then the closest I've ever been is probably Fargo, and that's a long distance away. At least I've seen it in pictures (e.g., in North by Northwest). Come to think of it, we stayed a few days in New York both going to Greece and coming back from it, and I don't recall that we ever visited the Statue of Liberty. While we were at Fort Campbell, we never went over to tour the nearby site of Fort Donelson.
Incidentally, Fort Donelson was where Forrest first really made a name for himself. He played a major role in the February 15 counterattack that opened up an escape route. When the route was closed again (because Gideon Pillow pulled the troops back) and the time came to surrender, he led his cavalry (on overburdened horses as many infantry joined them) out to Nashville. (An equally interesting story there is the way that Brigadier General Bushrod Johnson disappeared from so many histories of the battle. He was the fourth ranking Confederate general there and as an engineering officer had played a significant role in mislocating Fort Henry. He also played a major role in the counterattack. Perhaps he's forgotten because a few days after the surrender, he and an aide simply walked out, which was a bit embarrassing for Grant, who had mentioned his capture along with Buckner's in his telegram announcing the victory.)
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 28, 2019 10:42:18 GMT -8
I had relatives in Marietta and on one of our visits to them, we visited the amusement park connected to Stone Mountain. As I recall, we road the train around the park and viewed the mountain while on the train.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 10:55:36 GMT -8
Horwitz spends several weeks in Atlanta that much intersects on the subject of Gone With the Wind, including meeting a charming Scarlet look-alike. It turns out that the Japanese are fascinated by that novel and movie as well. They see much of themselves (postwar) in the South. The Scarlet look-alike is Melly Meadows, and she’s learned enough Japanese to chit-chat with her many Japanese admirers. She even met the Japanese Empress on the latter’s trip to Atlanta. Horwitz relates an amusing anecdote: Before coming to Atlanta, Horwitz had concluded his Wargasm with Rob. They had a great time of it. This part could easily make a good movie. They ran into all sorts of characters. They, of course, were characters themselves wherever they went, dressed as the were in Confederate and Union rags, trailing a stench wherever they went. After having lived through the Wargasm with Rob, which lasted a week, Horwitz finally sets off on his own again. He needs the break. But Rob calls him collect from a phone booth in Gettysburg five days later. “Tomorrow’s the anniversary of Pickett’s Charge,” he said. Having begun to recover from his chigger bites and poison-ivy rash, Horwitz was at least slightly reticent. But he is game to go. Then proceeds one of the strangest, and most marvelous, passages in the book. Rob, Tony, and a few other of Rob’s friends line up and make the charge at the appointed hour. It takes them about 25 minutes (same as the original, Rob said…was it really that long of a distance?).
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 28, 2019 11:10:00 GMT -8
The Japanese can be a bit odd in such things. For example, there was a bid Elvis following when I lived there. The Japanese take their hobbies more seriously than any other people I have ever seen. They can be obsessive.
That's a good excerpt on the modern assault of the Yankee positions.
Scarlet looks something like Demi Moore.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 11:10:45 GMT -8
The was a story in the Burns series that said a POW was walking by Lee and took the opportunity to complain to him that one of his soldiers had taken his hat. Apparently Lee made the soldier give it back to the Yankee.
One does not know which anecdotes are true and which are not. One doesn’t even know, for that matter, which revisions are true and which is just intellectual revisionism just to get noticed and to play the smarty-pants.
In the book, Foote is intellectually honest enough to admit that had he used different sources, he would have no doubt come up with a different history. This was in response to recent scholarship that has apparently gotten closer to the truth on some events here and there. Foote notes that it wasn’t until about 100 years after the war that anyone was able to give a fair perspective to the events. He thus was not surprised at all that scholarship continued to advance what we know about that war.
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Post by artraveler on Oct 28, 2019 11:25:48 GMT -8
I think William Faulkner says it better:
“It's all now you see. Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's roaring rim.”
My G grandfather, on my father's side, made that walk with his brother and what remained of the 42nd Mississippi from day one. On 3 July 2013 I made that walk across the same fields. The ghosts of what might have been went with me.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 11:38:01 GMT -8
My overall impression of the Civil War is that life is complicated. Reading an interview Horwitz does with some c-word Southerner who is downplaying Andersonville and calling its commandant (who was hanged by the Union) a hero is testament to how stupid and shallow people can be about this war…and perhaps why it happened in the first place.
One of Foote’s favorite quotes is when someone asked a Confederate soldier why he was fighting the Yankees. He said something like “Because they’re down here.”
Soldiers are the fodder for politics and events outside their normal lives. As this book, and Burns series, make clear, a dirt-poor farmer in the North and a dirt-poor farm in the South were brothers in everything but location. They otherwise might have been fast friends, or at least friendly acquaintances.
War is not just hell, as Sherman rightly observed. I think it often is little more than madness.
And this war is a big war. The battlefield was huge. The numbers involved were staggering. The destruction perhaps was not unparalleled, for there have been many wars in human history. But it was all wanton and useless. The Union was preserved. The slaves were freed. This is all good. But the methods for achieving both were horrible by any measure.
Whether as a “reenacter” or a Civil War buff, there’s no way to sum up this conflict. It’s obviously a lot of things to a lot of people. Everyone has their spin. And the war itself, from the North’s point of view, changed dramatically from a war to preserve the Union to one that necessarily changed to represent a higher cause.
The blacks were never subhuman. That simply fitted the supramacist views of the Southerners. Any sympathy for them is gone when you read about Andersonville. Much like the Nazis, everyone outside of their tribe was considered subhuman to some extent.
The South held an ugly ideology that at some point had to be expunged. Nobody planned this. But circumstances led to it.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 28, 2019 11:47:10 GMT -8
Foote's history was a remarkably comprehensive one compared to Catton's. For example, Catton mentions John Wilder only for the remarkable incident at Munfordville in the 1862 Kentucky campaign. Surrounded by the whole Army of Tennessee, Wilder was wondering, in essence, at what point he should surrender (he had already repulsed an initial attack by a smaller force). Not knowing whom to ask, this citizen-soldier crossed under a flag of truce to ask Confederate Major General Simon B. Buckner (exchanged after Fort Donelson), who he had heard was an honorable sort, what he should do. Buckner took him to Bragg, who let Wilder count Confederate artillery pieces until he decided to surrender his 4000 men.
To Catton, Wilder simply disappeared from history after that. In reality, Wilder was exchanged in time to be involved (unsuccessfully, like everyone else) in chasing John Hunt Morgan in his Christmas Raid (which knocked the L&N out for several weeks). He descended to mount his brigade (which pleased Rosecrans, wo wanted more cavalry) and arm them with the best rifle available, the Spencer repeating rife with its 7 round magazine. He played a crucial role in the Tullahoma campaign by taking and holding Hoover's Gap (which Thomas, his corps commander, feared could take several days to clear), opening up Rosecran's main route to Bragg's flank. He then raided the railroad in Bragg's rear. Later he played a key role in persuading Bragg to withdraw from Chattanooga.
He played a key role at Chickamauga. Bragg's advance on Rosecrans's flank was delayed a crucial day, after which it was no longer a flank attack. His repeating rifles stopped a few attacks, and after the initial rout on the second day he was about to attack the Confederate flank when Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana (the newsman who actually pushed the "On to Richmond" cry that led to First Bull Run) ordered him back and he decided to obey.
His role in the Tullahoma campaign is courtesy of Foote (and also a history of the brigade that I read while at Purdue). The rest mostly comes from Tucker's history of Chickamauga. (Like Wilder, Tucker was a Hoosier, which may have influenced his decision. The very first chapter, as I recall, was titled, "A Hoosier Horseman Opens the Gate".)
Pickett was in overall command of the charge (hence the name), but was obviously mainly addressing his own division, every regiment of which came from Virginia. The remaining troops were from other states, most notably North Carolina. (Their performance here led to part of the Tar Heel boast that they were "first at Bethel, farthest at Gettysburg, and last at Appomattox".)
The figure of 28,000 Confederate casualties at Gettysburg was the estimate in Thomas Livermore's Numbers and Losses. Lee reported about 20,000 but was admittedly incomplete. More recent estimates (e.g., in Busey and Martin's Regimental Numbers and Losses at Gettysburg) are more like 25,000, which was quite bad enough. (Meade lost slightly fewer, and could afford them a lot better.)
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Post by timothylane on Oct 28, 2019 11:55:48 GMT -8
The 42nd Mississippi suffered very heavily at Gettysburg as part of Davis's brigade of the III Corps. It lost a lot of prisoners on July 1 in the railroad cut at the hands of part of the Iron Brigade. On July 3, the brigade was on the front line at Pickett's charge. The only unit to the left was a small Virginia brigade (the only Virginia troops in the charge other than Pickett's division) that didn't make it all the way to Hancock's line.
Then again, Elizabeth had an ancestor, Colonel Shepard, in Archer's brigade. They also suffered heavily at the hands of the Iron Brigade and were on the front line at Pickett's Charge. Shepard was at most the 3rd ranking officer after Archer (captured July 1) and Colonel Fry (wounded and captured July 3). Her sister once sent her a recent biography of him.
The status of Henry Wirz (Andersonville commandant) is an interesting one. (Incidentally, I once read an autobiographical account by one of the Union prisoners. Rather interesting at times.) It should be noted that POW camps on both sides were pretty bad, though Andersonville may have been the worst. But a lot of that was lack of resources. Someone put up a monument to Wirz, which included the full citation of Grant's argument against the prisoner exchange program. There are indeed a lot of complexities. Grant made a good humanitarian as well as practical case against exchanges, but there was also the humanitarian argument in favor of it.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 15:02:34 GMT -8
Artler, Horwitz includes that entire quote in his narrative about participating in the Gettysburg reeanactment. It’s a good piece of writing. And I’d love to take that walk. Maybe I can get my older brother interested in going there. He’s into Indian battlegrounds. Maybe there are a few nearby.
My fear would be that all I’d see is a large field of grass and a bunch of marble statues. Certainly the way Horwitz wrote about it brought it somewhat to life. I can understand what he says about tourists being sort of lost without something more tangible to bring the event to life.
It might be hard to conceive in reverse, but in my area of the country there are just about zero historical sites. Yes, you have part of the Lewis & Clark trail, tales of the gold rush intersect Seattle, and perhaps a few other things. The only equivalent we have of a statue at every intersection is that damn near every rock and tree was named by Captain Vancouver and a few others. Those are our historical markers although no one really knows who Rainier was, or Puget, or Bainbridge, or Townsend, etc. Their main importance was that they were FOV (friends of Vancouver).
Oh…and we have Starbucks. Which can pretty much go to hell as far as I’m concerned. It’s the coffee equivalent of Andersonville.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 28, 2019 15:09:58 GMT -8
We are in perfect accord here.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 28, 2019 15:24:30 GMT -8
Some of the statues and monuments are more interesting than others, and some reflect interesting choices, such as a chaplain for the Irish Brigade. And much of the terrain isn't just flat ground -- e.g., Little Round Top and nearby Devil's Den. (The latter wasn't on the tour, but we could see it from the former.) It also helps to be familiar with battle history, as I have been at most battlefields. The sites at Gettysburg include the seminary cupola as well as the Lee and Meade HQs.
As for Indian actions, I don't recall seeing any listed. But if you arrive by car going through northern West Virginia (but not the northern panhandle), you should be within a reasonable distance of the site of Braddock's defeat on the Monongahela, in which Washington distinguished himself. There presumably is some sort of memorial for it. I'm not sure how close it was to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh), so it may be in Pennsylvania. With a little pre-planning you could locate it.
There are other sites in the area, too. There's Carlisle Barracks in Carlisle (not far away), which has a small historical museum and library. The building itself, as I recall, was a prison for Hessian POWs after Trenton. It also has some extra exhibits, such as World War II German 88mm gun. Further east is Hershey, where they conduct tours of the facility (and have a gift shop full of candy, where we got some fudge). Further east is Valley Forge, which is fairly extensive. All of those are roughly between Gettysburg and Philadelphia (which has its own historical exhibits).
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 28, 2019 16:24:41 GMT -8
When visiting Georgia, particularly Atlanta, it is topmost in the minds of many tourists to find Tara, or at least a house that Tara was based upon. The same with the Wilkes mansion. According to a Horwitz’s on-site research in this regard, there does exist an old dilapidated house (nothing grand) that was the Fitzgerald place which was owned by Margaret Mitchell’s great-grandparents. From what I can tell, this is real. But according to some old guy Horwitz interviewed, people running around looking for any landmarks that correspond with the book will not find them. And they will not find them because apparently Margaret Mitchell specifically did not want any direct correspondence to real places. It is this fellow’s story that Mitchell consulted him in regards to searching names used in her manuscript to makes sure they didn’t accidentally apply to a real-life person living in the area she describes in the book. Later, when this fellow made some claims (for commercial purposes) about where (I think) Twelve Oaks stood, Mitchell send him a letter that told him to knock it off. Still, Mitchell was born in Atlanta and we know where she grew up. Horwitz visits a couple old overgrown graves in the areas where she must have played and wondered if Mitchell had seen these gravestone and they had perhaps piqued her interest in the past. Anyway, long story short, there are enough interesting bits here that I’m half inspired to finally read the novel, having seen the movie at least a half dozen times. And, yes, people who visit Atlanta don’t have a firm grasp upon reality: It’s scary to think these people can vote.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 28, 2019 16:43:31 GMT -8
Decades ago, I read about the efforts often made to make sure that popular novels, movies, TV shows, and I suppose songs don't accidentally seem to reference anyone. They might be based on an actual event, in which case there will inevitably be some such references. (Note that John Scopes sued successfully over Bert Cates's portrayal in Inherit the Wind and Nathan Leopold, Jr. sued unsuccessfully over Compulsion.) So this sort of checking is hardly unusual, though the article I read was mainly concerned with people, not places.
Some movies are at least partly shot on site, though it may be more common now than it was then. We in Louisville appreciate that parts of Goldfinger were shot here, in locations we can recognize.
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