Free State of Jones is a movie that came out last Friday (June 24th). Based on the box office so far, I expect it'll disappear from the theaters in short order.
It has some fairly horrific battle scenes in it, including a man who appeared to have taken a small cannon ball to the face. The hospital scenes are not for the squeamish.
There is one shot of the interior of a mansion in which one can see a round thermostat. But I digress.
I wouldn't expect it to receive wide play in the South, for the tale that the move tells is far different from the "Noble Cause" bullshit that is the duty legend in Dixie.
The story of Newton Knight is very much in opposition to the encrusted mythology of the South, especially the fact that Knight had far more support from the local community than modern folk in the area would care to admit.
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Not surprised, there were pockets like this on both sides.
The Confederate government of Jefferson Davis lost most of its support with the common people when it imposed a universal draft on all white males under age 35 without providing for any means of feeding their families. The planters had been ordered to grow food but instead kept growing cotton that they could not sell, convinced that the war would be short and that the British and French, starved for cotton, would soon break the Union blockade. So there wasn't enough food for your family unless you grew it yourself. The small folk weren't necessarily anti-slavery or anti-Confederate or pro-Union so much as they were anti-starvation. As a result, draft evasion was pervasive and in order to fight off the press gangs, the draft dodgers became very organized. I was reading about General Banks's Trans-Mississippi campaign, where he was going to drive up from New Orleans and destroy the last remaining Confederate strongholds in Alexandria, Natchitoches, and Shreveport, and one of the striking things was how much trouble both the Confederates and the Union had with sending out foraging parties to confiscate food for their armies. Their foraging parties were continually being bushwhacked by the jayhawkers, the organized draft dodgers, who after all were dodging the draft to *keep* that food on their families' plates and didn't care whether you were wearing gray or blue when you came for it. Any party that entered the swamps in less than regiment strength did not emerge again.
By 1865 the Confederate draft system had totally collapsed. The system of draft press gangs had been completely overwhelmed by the jayhawkers, who had intimidated the enrolling officers to the point where they basically ceased to do their jobs. There was plentiful manpower in the South to replenish the armies of Lee and Johnson, but that manpower was resolutely staying home. And so the South collapsed, dead of the stupidity of wanting to draft men without making sure that there was food for the men's families.
Critics are calling it a preachy feel-good talkfest. And, you do know Matthew McConaughey stars in it?
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