Documentaries: Ken Burns VS. everyone else

soFlaNative said:
Thanks anyway, I went that route with no results.
I'm looking for the old tune, similar to the ones I titled.
Ashokan was written in the 1980's.

I'll have to dig up a Methodist hymnal and go title by title.
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Ashokan Farewell was the tune used in "The Civil War", I'm sure the artist was influenced by older hymns though.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N__4oE0Afs"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N__4oE0Afs[/ame]
 
I may be one of the few to take a contrarian view of the documentary. I was disappointed in the tack Ken Burns took in "The Civil War". He took a very much romanticized view of a conflict which was not romantic in any sense of the word. He also too much focused on the slavery issue, which wasn't the prime cause of the war.

The history leading up to the assault on Fort Sumter is worthy of a series itself. For instance, very little attention was directed toward the commerce laws which required southern states' ships to deadhead back to southern ports after delivering cotton to northern mills. Money to extend east-to-west railroads was plentiful for northern states, but scarce-to-nonexistent for the south.

The south was on the verge of breaking away from slavery, and probably would have become a thing of the past by about 1880. The industrial revolution was delayed for years because of the efforts required to supply to opposing armies.

The music and prose of the era Mr. Burns used, very much masked the horror of the entire war.
 
After watching his series I purchased the soundtrack.
Sometimes if I'm in a Civil War cemetery or battlefield, I'll play it a little louder just in case their are some souls "flitting about".
They might appreciate it.
Strange, huh?
 
Dennis The B said:
The music and prose of the era Mr. Burns used, very much masked the horror of the entire war.
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I was just wondering exactly what were the happy tunes you heard played in this documentary that masked the horror?????

Maybe a better way to ask it would be, what possible song could denote the horror of that war?????
 
msinc said:
The song is called "Ashokan Farewell" and it is played in D major. Many people believed it actually was a song from the civil war, but in fact it was composed by Jay Ungar in the early 1980's.
The old saying "the older the violin, the sweeter the music" is a fact. This song, to sound it's best, has to be played on a high quality, old instrument.
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I asked that "Ashokan Farewell" be played at my wedding 15 years ago.
 
Shelby was the star of the series.
His commentary went a long way toward making the series so memorable and so understandable.

His wry wit shows in this somewhat daunting comment he made toward the end of the series-

“We think that we are a wholly superior people – if we’d been anything like as superior as we think we are, we would not have fought that war. But since we did fight it, we have to make it the greatest war of all times. And our generals were the greatest generals of all time. It’s very American to do that.”

You need to ponder that, and raise a glass to Shelby. ;)
 
I agree. I wished for more Shelby Foote in that documentary.
A real pleasure to listen to.
 
Very respectfully disagree....

Dennis The B said:
I may be one of the few to take a contrarian view of the documentary. I was disappointed in the tack Ken Burns took in "The Civil War". He took a very much romanticized view of a conflict which was not romantic in any sense of the word. He also too much focused on the slavery issue, which wasn't the prime cause of the war.

The history leading up to the assault on Fort Sumter is worthy of a series itself. For instance, very little attention was directed toward the commerce laws which required southern states' ships to deadhead back to southern ports after delivering cotton to northern mills. Money to extend east-to-west railroads was plentiful for northern states, but scarce-to-nonexistent for the south.

The south was on the verge of breaking away from slavery, and probably would have become a thing of the past by about 1880. The industrial revolution was delayed for years because of the efforts required to supply to opposing armies.

The music and prose of the era Mr. Burns used, very much masked the horror of the entire war.
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I don't think it was romanticized at all and showed plenty of horror in the pictures of hoards of dead soldiers piled all over each other. I also doubt very seriously that the south was 'on the verge' of breaking away from slavery.' Growing up in the 50's and 60's here you would think that people still wanted slavery even then. It may have happened eventually, but to say 'on the verge' is something of an exaggeration. Slavery might as well have been abolished with a 5 year plan because that was the end result of the war, anyway. They also described the horror of the prisons, surgeries and disease that killed so many. Though even in tone, the descriptions given were plenty horrible, too. I think it made a good point that the war was only fought on the battlefield in fits and starts, but that people also had living to do without being in military service. Pretty complete picture I'd say.

Oh, and other causes of the Civil War. Yes, there were other causes like 'State's Right's' but these pertained to the State's Rights to slavery, in both the South and in new states on the western frontier.
 
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I always find it interesting whenever someone makes the statement that "the civil war wasn't about slavery." They usually go on to say, "it had more to do with the north imposing their laws and taxes on the south."
One only needs to read the succession letters written by each confederate state to the U.S. Government in which they announce their leaving the union. Without exception, every last one of them talk about the preservation of slavery. The state of Mississippi even says how important slavery is to the "world." There were many reasons for the civil war, but make no mistake...slavery was the biggest one.
 
Get an HDMI....

BAM-BAM said:
Dang.. was waiting for it .... just googled it ...... for some reason thought it was going to be rebroadcast in Oct. 2015........ but was shown Sept 7-11th.
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Get an HDMI cable to run from your computer to your TV. All or nearly all of the series can be found on youtube. Since it was shown on PBS I don't know about the licensing, but it's there. I just looked and the whole thing can be streamed from PBS.

This is a national treasure and I'm glad it's available to watch, rewatch and study.
 
Often I hear.....

People are impressed by the letter the man wrote to his wife telling her not to worry if he died because he would always be with her. People ask, "Why don't people talk like that anymore?" It's because today sentimentality is considered to be BS. I've been told that many times. People don't talk like that because it has been killed off.
 
rwsmith said:
I don't think it was romanticized at all and showed plenty of horror in the pictures of hoards of dead soldiers piled all over each other. I also doubt very seriously that the south was 'on the verge' of breaking away from slavery.' Growing up in the 50's and 60's here you would think that people still wanted slavery even then. It may have happened eventually, but to say 'on the verge' is something of an exaggeration. Slavery might as well have been abolished with a 5 year plan because that was the end result of the war, anyway. They also described the horror of the prisons, surgeries and disease that killed so many. Though even in tone, the descriptions given were plenty horrible, too. I think it made a good point that the war was only fought on the battlefield in fits and starts, but that people also had living to do without being in military service. Pretty complete picture I'd say.

Oh, and other causes of the Civil War. Yes, there were other causes like 'State's Right's' but these pertained to the State's Rights to slavery, in both the South and in new states on the western frontier.
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There have been numerous studies conducted over the economics of slavery, and most determined that slavery would no longer be economically viable by ca. 1880. The United States was one of the few in the world which violently ended slavery. Even in the "revolutionary" atmosphere of Brazil, slavery was peacefully abolished.

Slavery in North America had been a matter of fact for over 200 years before the 1861-1865 war, so an additional 20 years would be "on the verge" of ending.

It's a vast overstatement to assert that "State's Rights" was somehow a code for "Rights to slavery". The primarily agrarian South had numerous complaints about the legislative powers dominated by the more industrialized North. And, the so-called compromises devised in Congress only put off the inevitable conflict.
  • There were several of the seceding states which believed that a voluntary entry into the union, also meant voluntary secession, and those seceding states certainly had their valid reasons. That, in and of itself, was believed to be a States Right.
  • There had been several threats of secession, primarily in the New England states earlier in the century. Thus, secession was a known issue.
  • President Buchanan, in essence, recognized the South's right to secession by not taking any action against the first seven states to secede. The South's secession was supported by their understanding of the 10th Amendment.
  • When Lincoln became president, four other states immediately seceded after he called for 75,000 volunteers to prevent secession of those states already seceding.
There's ample proof that the 1861-1865 was no more than a power grab by the North. The CSA Congress adopted a low-tariff policy, and the Northern States were alarmed that the South's policy would lead to a huge loss of trade for them.

The vast majority of southerners were not slaveholders. So, the idea that perpetuating slavery was the cassus bellum, just doesn't hold water. The South, until the very end, never lacked for volunteers in the army. They firmly believed that they were fighting for the right to self-government.
 
Dennis The B said:
They firmly believed that they were fighting for the right to self-government.
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That much is certainly true....but, self government equaled slavery at the time, so why is it so hard to admit now???? They had no problem owning up to it in 1860-61 when the states all wrote their succession letters.

As to the non-viability of slavery in 1880????? Slavery would be viable right now, from an economical standpoint...I don't know when it ever would not be, save the moral issues.
 
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msinc said:
That much is certainly true....but, self government equaled slavery at the time, so why is it so hard to admit now???? They had no problem owning up to it in 1860-61 when the states all wrote their succession letters.

As to the non-viability of slavery in 1880????? Slavery would be viable right now, from an economical standpoint...I don't know when it ever would not be, save the moral issues.
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Human labor, no matter slave or wage earner, has economic value. When the economic value of manual labor becomes less than that of mechanical labor, that human labor goes away. The costs of housing, feeding, clothes, medical care, etc., are all considered in the slave owner's cost of production. When those costs go away when the slave is freed, the price of those costs are transferred to the newly created free laborer in the form of wages.

There were already mechanical means of farming, albeit in low use. However, cotton was not the only crop planted in the South. Corn, beans, and other crops lent themselves to mechanical planting and harvesting.

As a matter of comparison, a huge number of American jobs have migrated to Mexico because of NAFTA, and their cheaper labor costs. However, Mexico has also seen many of its jobs migrate to Asia, because those countries could produce the same products with even cheaper labor.
 
msinc said:
That much is certainly true....but, self government equaled slavery at the time, so why is it so hard to admit now???? They had no problem owning up to it in 1860-61 when the states all wrote their succession letters.

As to the non-viability of slavery in 1880????? Slavery would be viable right now, from an economical standpoint...I don't know when it ever would not be, save the moral issues.
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That's not true. Self-government meant that the Federal government should abide by the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution. Federalist #45 stated:
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
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