r/ShermanPosting • u/Crafter235 • 1d ago
Sometimes, it feels like a lot of Civil War media is too...polite, if you catch my drift
•
u/Brent_Lee 1d ago edited 1d ago
One of my favorite adaptions of an old Tom Clancy quote is 'The difference between fiction and history is that fiction has to make logical sense.' So to make standard Civil War movies or docs most creative teams tend to stick the standard stuff.
To your point, there is A LOT of weird tidbits and dramatic ironies in the Civil War that would not make it out of the writers room without a lot of red ink if someone were just making it up whole cloth.
Grant losing his denture during a battle and having to send for new ones is always a funny little detail. He took them out at night and put them in a bowl of water and in the morning a servant dumped it without knowing they were in there.
•
u/gadget850 2nd great grandpa was a CSA colonel 1d ago
Now I know I have something in common with Grant!
•
•
u/Frapplo 1d ago
Oh, who hasn't lost their dentures while fighting traitors?
•
u/gadget850 2nd great grandpa was a CSA colonel 1d ago
For me, it was just a filling the day before rolling into Iraq in 1991.
•
u/Hot_Potato66 1d ago
My favorite is while some Federals were digging a trench at Vicksburg they realized it was gonna run into the Confederate lines if they kept going. (Obviously) Deciding to consult with the Confederates in the opposite trench, it was agreed upon that the Confederates would abandon their trench so they "wouldn't let all that work go to waste. You boys will be in the city soon enough anyways"
•
u/KellHound270 Guard the Line! 23h ago
When the modern Confederate sympathizers are stupider than the original Confederate soldiers
•
u/Hot_Potato66 23h ago
I kind of view the surrender of Vicksburg as a demi-mutiny like lots of siege surrenders are. Pemberton got a letter from the rank and file that said "If you can't feed us then you might as well surrender"
The implication of hungry men with guns was certainly a factor in Pemberton's decision to surrender
•
•
u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago
How Stonewall Jackson was killed in a friendly fire incident too.
•
u/RustedAxe88 1d ago
There's a book set in the Predator universe that features Jackson and a Union soldier battling a Predator together and when they kill it, Jackson is covered in its blood and he's shot to death when he returns to camp because his men are horrified.
•
u/JonathanRL 23h ago
Roland Emmerich made a fantastic movie about Midway where my companion laughed at several points saying "Thats just stupid, why would they make it up".
And I proceeded to tell him that yes, a Gunner did rush to a parked plane to use it to shoot down a Japanese Bomber that the entire fleets AA guns failed to hit and not only did the plane cut off his plane in half, the gunner then hid from search parties thinking Admiral Halsey was going to tear him a new one.
So am I saying I want Roland Emmerich to do a civil war movie? Well, if it includes F/A-18C Hornets or Dauntless Dive Bombers I do. Or rather, reality is sometimes more over the top than fiction.
•
•
•
u/CptKeyes123 1d ago edited 1d ago
Something I HAVE seen is that it WAS weirdly formal at times... only adding to the absurdity. Like, you'd have really brutal war crimes one minute, then weird honor codes the next. Like, rebs telling a union soldier they captured to turn himself in to the next patrol he met cuz they were in a hurry... and it was fully expected he would do that! A cynic familiar with 20th century history would assume this person would just run away, rather than obey.
Or Sherman and General Hood engaging in really snide engagements during the Siege of Atlanta, with Hood accusing Sherman of war crimes for firing on a city, Sherman pointing out the rebs loudly and proudly did the same thing... and also its really bad timing for Hood to call for decency in the name of whatever when 1, he's a slaver, and 2, at the time, Hood had no family while Sherman had just lost a kid and never got to see him cuz he was fighting...
•
u/Hot_Potato66 1d ago
At Shiloh, two Kentucky regiments were fighting each other and one of the Rebels was captured. While being taken to the rear, the POW recognized his brother in the Union ranks of the Kentucky men and told him "Don't shoot that way, Dad's down there"
•
u/und88 Custom Flair 23h ago
There needs to be monuments to southerners who were the only men in the family loyal or smart or non-racist enough to fight for the US while the rest of their family fought for the traitors.
•
u/CptKeyes123 22h ago
At multiple battlefields in Virginia I saw farms owned by unionists whose neighbors burned them down for NOT being rebs!
•
•
u/FrighteningJibber 1d ago edited 1d ago
Communities were a lot closer too. You could find someone two towns over pretty easily. Hence why they want us to be surveilled more, less a neighbour ratting you out and more a robot.
•
u/StatisticianAway4010 1d ago
Like, rebs telling a union soldier they captured to turn himself in to the next patrol he met cuz they were in a hurry... and it was fully expected he would do that!
Maybe they didn't actually want to capture or kill him? It must be hard to actually do that
•
u/FrighteningJibber 1d ago
He's also wearing pretty distinguishable clothing. Running around enemy lines in blue makes you stand out. And you're definitely going to have a hard time if you find some farm to steal from because their men's clothes have probably been used or sent away.
•
u/othernamealsomissing 1d ago
In the movie "Gettysburg" this situation happens in reverse. In the heat of battle managing prisoners is hard. One way to deal with this is to kill prisoners, but there's no way a white confederate is going to kill a white union for convenience, or vice a versa.
•
•
•
u/Any_Collection_3941 11h ago
I don’t think Sherman really cared for Hood’s family owning slaves. There is a telling back and forth they have in the last two letters where Hood says they will fight to death instead of surrendering to him and his negro allies. Sherman, instead of defending his black troops, claims that he had left all of them in Chattanooga and that the presumption was false. This was first of all a lie, he had black troops defending his supply lines south of Chattanooga. It secondly showed Sherman’s negative idea that black soldiers were inherently poorer than white ones. He only allowed black soldiers to guard supply lines because he did not want to have them fight and supposedly preform poorly. Their only use was to free up more white men to the front lines in his mind.
•
u/KellHound270 Guard the Line! 23h ago
I want a Civil War movie that only portrays real events with minimal alterations. Like Sherman’s rampage and the Southern medical college that had taxidermized humans
•
•
u/kcg333 15h ago
sorry i must’ve been getting snacks during that episode. wtf happened? or what words do i look up?
•
u/KellHound270 Guard the Line! 14h ago
Union soldiers were raiding a Southern town, and a medical college they were looking through not only had taxidermized slaves, they had taxidermized one of John Brown’s children. Understandably, they burned down the building
•
u/HoidToTheMoon 13h ago edited 13h ago
they had taxidermized one of John Brown’s children.
What the actual fuck
Edit: What the FUCK
Nevertheless, the body was used as a means of showing the pro-slavery, secessionist city and College's attitude toward abolitionists. The exhibit was labelled "John Brown's son—thus always with Abolitionists",[12][13] an allusion to Virginia's motto, "Sic semper tyrannis", "Thus always to tyrants." The lips were "purposely distorted in disrespect."
The skin was used to make moccasins. Small pieces of the skin were held by doctors and others locally as souvenirs. Four of the finger joints on one hand and all the toes on one foot had also been taken by souvenir hunters. Teeth had been deliberately broken.
In retaliation for this insult to the great Union icon and to their cause, Union forces burned the College just before leaving Winchester. It never reopened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_Brown_(abolitionist)#An_anti-abolitionist_exhibit
•
u/Any_Collection_3941 11h ago
This was a very common thing in the western world at the time. Bodies of criminals that were executed were given to medical institutes for dissection. The most notorious criminals’ bodies were even put on display, such as William Burke who is still on display. Famous criminals skin was also commonly turned in leather especially in connection to slave revolt. Nat Turner was one such example and I believe some parts of his skin were also at the Winchester Medical College.
•
u/Any_Collection_3941 10h ago
I don’t think they had any other taxidermized people other than Watson Brown. I think that his body being on display was less egregious than the quartered and decapitated and perhaps tortured black boy left in the dissection room. But of course poor Watson already dead before was embalmed and on display for three years until his mother got him back in one piece, while the enslaved woman never saw her quartered boy again.
•
•
u/lifelongfreshman 19h ago
See, unlike everyone else here, I thought this was about the rivers of blood that none of these movies dare to show. To quote Andy Rakich,
Apart from all the Lost Cause stuff, the goreless PG-13 battles are Gods and Generals biggest crime against historical authenticity. As far as I'm concerned, you can't accurately depict the battles of the Civil War without showing rivers of blood. This is a first-hand account of the Battle of Antietam from Christoph Niederer of the 20th New York infantry:
I had just got myself pretty comfortable when a bomb burst over me and completely deafened me. I felt a blow on my right shoulder and my jacket was covered with white stuff. I felt mechanically whether I still had my arm, and thank God it was still whole. At the same time I felt something damp on my face; I wiped it off. It was bloody. Now I first saw that the man next to me, Kessler, lacked the upper part of his head, and almost all his brains had gone into the face of the man next to him, Merkel, so that he could scarcely see. Since any moment the same could happen to anyone, no one thought much about it.
[...] If you don't show the violence as it really was, it gives the impression that the Civil War was more like a camping trip than an actual war.
•
•
u/Strength-Certain 1d ago
Mule Bombs at the Battle of Valverde
This is my favorite unhinged incident from the war. Here in New Mexico where we defeated the Texans for the second time since their republic time period.
•
•
u/indolering 1d ago
The derth of based civil war media celebrating killing all those slave owning fucks is really sad. I would love for you to list out your fav things!
•
u/OldSchoolAJ 1d ago
Wanna give some examples instead of vaguposting about stuff that happened 160 years ago?
•
u/Domovie1 23h ago
The whole circus that was the battle of Galveston.
Step 1: Confederates remove most of the cannon to use elsewhere. This despite it being a major trade port.
Step 2: Union tries to arrange a truce for reasons, Confederates can’t get a boat out fast enough. Ridiculous boat chase ensues, truce arranged that does ???.
Step 3: Union occupies a city mostly evacuated during the truce.
Step 4: Union builds essentially no defences, does not destroy the bridge to the island.
Step 5: Cotton clad warships proceed to disable, sink or force ashore two union ships, despite being outnumbered 6-2.
Step 6: Union troops ashore believe the explosion on the USS Westfield (self-inflicted) is a signal to surrender, and do so.
The whole war was a series of slightly amateurish mistakes, interspersed with a handful of generals stumbling backwards into either success, or their own troops, who shot them.
•
u/MisterBlack8 15h ago
Bear in mind that this port is on the wrong side of the Mississippi River on the Gulf of
AmericaMexico, and was not considered that important of a trading port. Once the Union took the river with Vicksburg, cargo in Galveston was of no use to the Confederates.•
u/Crafter235 1d ago
Stonewall Jackson and his whole personality
•
u/MrTurkeyTime 1d ago
Still super vague!
•
u/USAFmuzzlephucker 1d ago
Well, where to start? He was religious to the point of almost cultish fervor. He went into battle with one arm raised to "balance the blood." He didn't like to battle on a Sunday if he could help it, nor mail a letter that he knew would be in transit on a Sunday. He didn't like pepper in his food because he said it "made his leg ache." He would get a light in his blue eyes going into battle, which earned him another nickname, "Ol Blue Light." His men adored him but when you look at how he treated his men, as a historian, you have to wonder if it was simply some sort of trauma bond from abuse and not actual admiration.
•
u/MisterBlack8 15h ago
He also got shot to death by his own men.
It's like the MAGA of their day whacking Charlie Kirk.
•
u/Daemonic_One 1d ago edited 1d ago
You're in the wrong sub for not doing your own reading. Try this.
•
u/Appropriate_Top1737 1d ago
Ah, cool. A sub whith vague statements and people saying find it youself. That sounds like a fun sub.
•
u/Clammuel 1d ago
I’m not the guy so forgive me for not having specifics or a clear answer, but I remember reading once that Stonewall very possibly had autism based on his personality and actions. Whether that is true or whether that is what OP was referring to I don’t know, but I remember the reasoning and examples making a lot of sense to me.
•
u/FrighteningJibber 1d ago
Oh so you've read all the books I've read? Okay since this is a place of discussion, what did you think of "The Civil War as A Theological Crisis"? Do you think Stonewalls personally was changed due to his lack of Catholicism or environmental impacts?
•
•
u/FiveOhFive91 20h ago
Reading all of this makes me think The Civil War on Drugs is pretty accurate
•
•
•
u/MisterBlack8 16h ago
Can you imagine giving some rations to a young black boy, and some old white guy yells at you to "Get away from my property!"
And once you do, he says "Come along," and the black boy says "Yes, father"?
•
u/Expert_Cricket2183 21h ago
Gentle reminder, the concept of warcrimes didn't exist for most of modern history and even then, only saw real consequence at the end of WW2.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Welcome to /r/ShermanPosting!
As a reminder, this meme sub is about the American Civil War. We're not here to insult southerners or the American South, but rather to have a laugh at the failed Confederate insurrection and those that chose to represent it.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.