United we stand

This’ll be quick. Tonight I went to the Classical 89 silent movie night in the de Jong concert hall, where they showed Buster Keaton’s film The General, complete with live organ accompaniment. And before the movie they even had a little vaudeville act with a jazz band and some Charleston dancers. I loved it. Incredibly fun, and the movie was really quite funny, too.

The film takes place during the Civil War, with the good guys being the South and the enemy being the North. And that brings us to what I wanted to blog about: while watching the movie, I was really struck by how awful it was that we had to have a civil war. American fighting against American. Real lives lost, real families shattered into pieces. Sure, the cause was important — I’m as glad as anyone that we don’t have slaves anymore — but wouldn’t it have been better if there had been some other way?

I don’t know enough about politics or military strategy or economics to know if that would even be possible, of course. What’s done is done. The war eventually ended, Lincoln freed the slaves, and America was — to one extent or another — reunited. It’s miraculous in a way that the country healed back together again, come to think of it. It could have been different. The North and the South could have become two different countries, eventually even speaking different languages, perhaps. A fractured and divided America.

Hmm. That description actually kind of fits the modern political scene… :P

Don’t the people in the South speak another language? Have you listened to Paula Deen on the Food Network?
haha I only say this with the pure love of the Southern dialects.

After learning about the Civil War in an AL elementary school, visiting parts of the rural South, and observing Southern race-relations, I’m not so sure the country has completely healed.

For entertaining non-fiction about how the confederacy never really died, check out Confederates in the Attic.

One of my friends in school, who had lived in Arkansas for a dozen years or so before moving to down, had a license-plate-size sign he kept on the dash of his truck, depicting an angry-looking cartoon confederate soldier holding a confederate flag, with the words, “Forget? Hell!”

His older brother had a big belt buckle with the confederate flag in the shape of the U.S., and the words “The South will rise again”.

And don’t forget that the South Carolina capitol building still flies a confederate flag to this day.

I think the most disheartening and frightening thing that seems to have survived from the Civil War is the KKK. It doesn’t matter where I see them depicted (aside from perhaps the rather humorous “O Brother Where Art Thou?”) but those guys are seriously evil and extremely scary.

I went to one of these shows a year ago, and I’m not going to lie, it was pretty fantastic. Except the one I saw didn’t address such deep issues (or really come close to them). But it was very funny and the organist was amazing. Fun times.

I love these kinds of shows, too. The best live accompaniment for silent film I’ve ever seen is the Alloy Orchestra. I’m not sure they play outside of the east coast (I saw them in New Hampshire), but they were fantastic.

They compose entirely new scores for the silent films they perform (both shorts and features), and perform them on a combination of traditional and off-the-wall instruments (think bedpans and giant springs, etc). I loved it. They sell DVDs, but I never bought any, and I think the live show is probably really where it’s at. One I went to was a series of shorts, including the pre-sound Laurel and Hardy short Big Business (Google Video, YouTube part 1 and part 2), and One Week (Google Video, YouTube part 1 and part 2), a Buster Keaton classic. I also saw their performance of the Harold Lloyd feature Speedy:

I’m thrilled to discover that some of their work is on YouTube. Just search “Alloy Orchestra” and you’ll find a few Buster Keaton films with their accompaniment. Cool!

Well don’t forget–the Civil War was about way more than slavery. It was about tariffs and states’ rights. The Union was asserting that the Federal Government had the final say in what the states were doing, and the Confederacy was protesting that. Slavery was only an appendage to that, as were taxes and tariffs. In a way, the Civil War MADE us a single country. Example: before the Civil War, people said “The United States ARE”; after the Civil War they said “The United States IS.”

Example: before the Civil War, people said “The United States ARE”; after the Civil War they said “The United States IS.”

I’m not sure if you mean this literally or metaphorically. While it’s a catchy way of metaphorically encapsulating changes in popular thought before and after the Civil War, it’s certainly not strictly true. The two usages have different semantics, both of which are useful in different ways.

William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, 1832, p. 197:
The United States of America is a very happy country.

William H. Seward, The Works of William Seward, 1853, p. 415:
Her argument is, that ” the United States of America is a body corporate, distinct from the states as political bodies, and capable of holding real and personal property;”

When talking about the country as a whole, the singular clearly makes sense, because the several states formed one federal nation, which obviously was true both before and after the Civil War.

George Bancroft, History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America, 1889, p. 331:
The United States of America are not only a republic, they are “a society of societies,” “a federal republic.”

John Bouvier, A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States, 2004, p. 591:
The United States of America are a corporation endowed with the capacity to sue and be sued, to convey and receive property.

When referring to common properties of the States together, the plural seems most fitting. In the 2004 example, I’d actually expect the singular, so it’s particularly notable and interesting that this law dictionary chooses to use the plural.

I know, I know. I’m a spoilsport.

I just saw the Nicolas Cage popcorn flick National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Now I know where you got that line…

No comment. :)