The Ultimate Historical Gaming Thread

That kid is having time of his life and doesn't even know it.

 

Just finished rewatching Gods and Generals.

Like Zulu Dawn, it's only the second time I've seen this film, but in this case this is the first time I've really understood the full political side of it, and my, it had balls to delve into the real motivations behind why ordinary Confederates would pick up a musket and fight for their cause, rather than do what many other films have and just present the Southerners as massed faceless ranks of evil slave-mongers. Of course, the film is largely disliked today because of this - so-called historians deride the film as "an attempt to rewrite the history of the American South", which, when you consider that these 'historians' have likely studied at Left-wing Ivy-league American universities and have more than likely participated in over a century of pro-Union revisionism since the American Civil War ended, is rather a case of the Pot and the Kettle.

Of course, slavery was certainly a thing in the American South, that is undeniable (and in some states that supported the Union too - making pro-Union historians all the more hypocritical), but I severely doubt that your run-of-the-mill ordinary Southerner, who would live on a little farm with just his family and no slaves for company, would really want to join a war and risk his life just for the desire to keep black people enslaved. Such an agenda might motivate a quantity (but again not all) of the wealthy plantation owners to pay financial support to the Confederacy, but wouldn't always raise the 'Poor Bloody Infantry' to actually do most of the fighting. A lot of modern day historians seem to forget that, before the latter half of the 20th Century when television and, most recently, the Internet made politics so much more accessible to the common man, most ordinary people didn't give two figs about politics. Such a thing was the domain of the richest in society, those who could afford to spend time sitting in council chambers and debating policies. Your ordinary Confederate farmer, by contrast, would have only shown interest in his family, his modest assets and the basic culture he had grown up with all his life - all of which were threatened by the war the Union brought to the doorstep of the Confederate states. The film does a very good job of portraying this... that most people in the American South were just ordinary people like those in the North, ordinary people living ordinary lives, and wanting to protect those lives from those who might despoil them. Just because there were some pillocks in the region that did have openly racist views, it is a massively gross generalisation from modern-day 'historians' to depict all Southerners as being like that (and modern-day pillocks in those areas championing the views of historical pillocks also does not help).

The fact that the Union chooses to just invade several Confederate states out of nowhere with armies, as though they were enemies, points very much to the probability that the original objective of the Civil War was intended to be conquest - conquest to reinforce the notion that, in the eyes of the Union, and especially President Lincoln, the Southern states were meant to be part of the Union, and were not allowed any independent sovereignty. This, of course, prompts the Southern states, with the mindset of each state being a separate little country in its own right (and why wouldn't you, given most US states are bigger than European nations), to feel threatened, and so the war begins. This, funnily enough, gives the conflict echoes of the American War of Independence, where this time it's the US that plays the part of a 'colonising' power that starts to behave as though it is too big for its boots (perfectly symbolised in Gods and Generals by a regiment of Confederates donning their ancestors' Continental Army uniforms from that former conflict). Americans right up to the present day hate to see themselves ever as 'The Bad Guys', yet while they are so eager to continue to celebrate the rebellion of their beloved Continental Army against British assertion of power in the 1700s, they continue to remain appalled at the idea that when the US tried to assert its own power in the same way, a similar rebellion emerged for similar reasons.

Indeed, it would not be surprising if the beginning of the Civil War was indeed down to Lincoln's desire to unify all the states of America under his rule ("by force if necessary", as one Union Colonel reflects in the film), a desire to hold presidential power over all those states. Such a motivation would be appealing to many leaders, and is an echo of both the Roman and English Civil Wars, each started by a single man's desire for more power (Gaius Julius Caesar intending to seize sole control of Rome, and Charles I wanting to dissolve the English Parliament and restore what he believed to be the 'Divine Right of Kings' to rule unopposed as a dictator). Where the American Civil War is concerned at least, history repeating itself very much comes into play on multiple counts. Moreover, at least one documentary on the American Civil War I know of mentioned that the idea of the abolition of slavery being part of the Union's cause was only postulated later on during the conflict (supported by the same Union Colonel character in Gods and Generals referring to "Aims changing"), principally to stop the outcome of the American Revolution happening again - just as France and Spain supported much of the man and fleet power to grant the American forces overall victory in that conflict, Britain and France were planning to aid the Confederates to victory in the Civil War. Yet both powers had abolished slavery long before America had, and so a prime way to stop them was to play up the idea that the Union was aiming to abolish slavery across all of America, a ploy that worked very well in denying the Confederates military and economic aid that would have kept up their initial streak of success far beyond the pre-Gettysburg period had they received it (indeed, watching Zulu Dawn not long before Gods and Generals really helped to showcase how British infantry, even at the time of the American Civil War, would have wiped the floor with their American counterparts had they entered the theatre).

And yet, for all the benevolent depiction of most ordinary Confederates as actual human beings supporting a more benign cause than the preservation of slavery, the film doesn't do so at the expense of their Union enemies - the bravery, courage, convictions and human lives of Union troops are displayed also. The film does focus more on the Confederates as a whole, but this is in no small part down to it being intended principally as a biopic for General 'Stonewall' Jackson... it wouldn't be much of a biopic if it focused more on the other side! The main thing is that it doesn't demonise "Them" in favour of "We" - what I, certainly, would call a balanced portrayal.

It makes me want to play around with ideas for a 10mm Confederate army for Armoured Clash now...

 

A lovely lot of Rebs there... though Armoured Clash has made 10mm more appealing of late, I am still fond of the Warlord Epic Battles ones and have a sprue each of the Confederate and Unionist infantry I received as freebies from Warlord themselves at a small convention a while back. Good to know that Kalistra's 12mm line are compatible with them - I also noticed they have some Celts and Romans that I imagine would go very nicely with the Hail Caesar Epic Battles Celts I received free with Wargames Illustrated last July.

 

We've still got our VHS ... but I know we can get it on DVD here in the UK, so we'll replace it at some point...

 

That's old school!

 

One man's 'old school' is another man's civilised


Anyway, currently I'm watching Gone with the Wind for the first time. Another solid portrayal of life in the Confederacy that escapes pro-Union revisionist stereotyping, alongside Gods and Generals and Cold Mountain. Indeed these three films all capture the Confederates' point of view in the American Civil War nicely from different angles - Gods and Generals from the point of view of the military, Gone with the Wind in the eyes of the rich 'Knights' and 'Cavaliers', and Cold Mountain from the perspective of more ordinary Southerners.

 

I found that film to be largely boring, its pacing is all off, and its major weakness, to me, is that it is not focused. This is part of the problem with it not set within a single battle, but rather seemingly centered around the whole career of STormwall Jackson. As I recall, I find the subplot with the southern family with slaves to be oddly out of place -- probably a way to make up for the sausagefest that is Gettysburg, but it did not mash well with the rest of the story, in my opinion.
I rather think Gettysburg did a good job showing why the southerners fought

 

The film was certainly intended to be a biopic of Jackson more than anything else, but it has some good battle scenes through most of its duration. I've certainly seen films with far far worse pacing issues (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Matrix films, particularly Reloaded, are the ones I can think of off the top of my head).

Hm, I'm not bothered by those scenes, it adds a bit of tragic irony as to how Jackson shows himself to be a benign father figure but barely gets chance to be that father figure with his own flesh-and-blood daughter, and of course shows how family life was carrying on as best it could while the menfolk were out fighting the Yankees. It also takes some time away from the battle scenes to limber up for the next ones to stop it becoming just a wall of battles.

Fair enough... I've yet to rewatch Gettysburg, but those are indeed some good quotes too.

 

Nothing wrong with that. As long a they are in good working order, keep enjoying them.

 

Exactly. Though I notice that Kelly's Heroes isn't in that movie list...

 

Given that it's WWII-themed and we're talking about 19th Century (mainly Confederates but also Zulu War) I'm not surprised