Without the participation of African Americans, the war to save the Union “as it was” could not have been transformed into a war to save the Union “as it should be.”
Without the participation of African Americans, the war to save the Union “as it was” could not have been transformed into a war to save the Union “as it should be.”Mackubin Thomas Owens writes…
Screening “Glory” during a history course raises a question asked in a 1995 New York Timesarticle by Richard Bernstein: “Can Movies Teach History?” Bernstein noted that “more people are getting their history, or what they think is history, from the movies these days than from the standard history books.” Then he asked: Does “the filmmaker, like the novelist, have license to use the material of history selectively and partially in the goal of entertaining, creating a good dramatic product, even forging what is sometimes called the poetic truth, a truth truer than the literal truth?” In other words, “does it matter if the details are wrong if the underlying meaning of events is accurate?”
and as history never, ever changes anything in human nature,
But in response to Bernstein’s question, historical inaccuracies aside, “Glory” indeed contains a deeper truth. This deeper truth is illustrated by the contrast between the movie’s view of slaves and that of a story recounted by the Greek historian Herodotus. At the beginning of book four of The History, Herodotus tells of the return of the nomadic Scythians from their long war against the Medes, during which time the Scythian women had taken up with their slaves. The Scythian warriors suddenly found a race of slaves arrayed against them.
The Scythian women must have been rather lascivious, but not hot enough for slaves to hang around…
Having been repulsed repeatedly by the slaves, one of the Scythians admonished his fellows to set aside their weapons and take up horsewhips. “As long as they are used to seeing us with arms, they think that they are our equals and that their fathers are likewise our equals. Let them see us with whips instead of arms, and they will learn that they are our slaves; and, once they have realized that, they will not stand their ground against us.”
The tactic worked. The slaves were bewildered by the whip-wielding Scythians, lost their fighting spirit, and fled in terror. The implication of Herodotus’s story is clear. There are natural masters and natural slaves. A slave has the soul of a slave and lacks the manliness to fight for his freedom, especially if a master never deigns to treat him as a man.
If you read the Old Testament, the Torah, and understand the slave mentality of the older generation of Jews out of Egypt, then you will also understand why God made them wander for 40 years…more or less two generations.
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