Thursday, March 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Defending the South

Give Gods and Generals a chance, local Civil War filmmaker says

By Heidi Walters

USA Today called it "a drawn-out and boring Civil War movie" and added, "You don't envy the three soldiers who get shot for desertion, but you do identify with their desire to flee."

The Los Angeles Times complained that "all that yapping!--great swaths of quotations from the Bible and the classics, countless ringing speeches, endless stretches of flowery dialogue" puts audiences to sleep.

And even Mercury critic Bob Grimm couldn't contain his disgust over producer Ted Turner's latest film, Gods and Generals, calling it "garbage": "The movie simply says the Confederacy didn't really do anything wrong, putting the issue of slavery on the back burner and painting the North as invading, marauding Vikings."

Oh, how the protests rolled in. The Mercury received piles of letters from Civil War buffs. And local documentary filmmaker Stan Armstrong, a Civil War historian, called to register his support for the movie. Which piqued our interest.

Armstrong has produced four documentaries, including Black Confederates: The Forgotten Men in Gray and the soon-to-be-released Native Americans of the Civil War. He also teaches a class at CCSN called "Ethnic Awareness in Film." Last year he taught a class at UNLV called "Understanding the Civil War in Film." And he's giving this year's students extra credit if they go see Gods and Generals.

Armstrong, although born in San Francisco and raised in Las Vegas from the age of 2, feels a strong connection to the South. His parents came from Louisiana, and he traces part of his ancestry back to a union between his white great-great-great-grandfather, Capt. John David Herndon, a Louisiana slave holder, and Herndon's black mistress. Armstrong, who has seen Gods and Generals three times, says critics just don't get the South and haven't a clue what it was like during that era.

"I'm a moderate Democrat," Armstrong says, "and I try to look at things both ways, even-handed. That's how my films are. And I think reviewers give this movie a bad rap because of its strong Christian overtones. And they think everyone in the South had slaves. But only 10 percent of people in the South had slaves. And there were half a million black people who were free, called Free People of Color--and 10 percent of them were slave owners. Some Native Americans were slave owners."

Armstrong says Americans have been "brainwashed to believe the South was wrong." But he says it's a mistake to view the 1850s and 1860s South within today's context.

"We live in a society today where we have everything handed to us--TV, Internet, pizza," he says. "People back then were honorable. There was a spirituality then that's gone now from society. Back then, the most-read book was the Bible. And if you were a poor Tennessee farmer boy, and you owned maybe a mule, two pairs of britches and a pair of shoes, and if the Yankees were invading your home, you'd pick up your old shotgun from the mantelpiece and be sworn into the Confederacy. Picture you're a boy, and you're sitting by the fireplace and your dad's been telling you stories about the Mexican-American War, and all of a sudden you see generals marching past your window. You'd be excited. You'd want to be a soldier.

"I just don't think [movie critics] understand what man was like 140 years ago."

He says men like Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and officer Nathan Bedford Forrest, along with black abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, were all "great men. And both sides felt they were right."

"Don't get me wrong, I think slavery was morally wrong," Armstrong says. "And if I'd been around in those days, I don't know what side I'd have fought on. I guess it would have depended on where I lived." But Armstrong says he thinks if the Confederacy had won the war, slavery still would have been abolished by the turn of the century.

He says today's "liberal left" just can't seem to tolerate a movie that tells the story of the Civil War from the viewpoint of Confederates. And he doesn't like the way the Civil War has been relegated to the dusty back pages of American history, only to be trotted out respectably if it's presented from a Yankee-positive perspective and, preferably, with major movie stars playing key characters and with a love story thrown in.

"I think we should stick to the facts, and we should try to understand," he says. "I tell my students all the time, put yourself in their shoes."

Armstrong literally does that, by donning Civil War-era clothes periodically and re-enacting battles with fellow buffs. And this coming Memorial Day, he plans to hold a memorial service for two Civil War vets who've lain side by side since the 1930s in Las Vegas' Woodlawn Cemetery. One fought for the South and one fought for the North.

And don't be alarmed if you see him wielding a Confederate flag along with the Stars and Stripes. "I'm for flying the Confederate flag," he says. "I think it's very bad when neo-Nazis use it to forward their own agendas. But the Confederate flag, when it was designed, was a symbol of awareness that we were a confederacy. And to black people in the South today, it's really been no problem. In the South, it's just a symbol of the South."

Armstrong says he thinks there's more racism in the North and West today, as well as a disturbing remnant of Yankee disdain for Southerners. "I think a lot of people look upon the South as being backward," he says. "But I think it is the last great frontier. Southerners--you go down an old country road, and people wave at you. It's like in that old Hank Williams Jr. song, you still have chivalry. You know, `We say grace and we say ma'am/ if you ain't into that we don't give a damn.'"