Revisionist History

You might be right. I too noticed the "one of the family" treatment of the black characters, but I'm not sure how to judge this. Given that movies are notorious for having to distill complex topics into a few seconds of screen time it's no surprise that things get distorted. It is of course possible that there is a great deal of documented history that the Adams folks were very supportive of blacks so that's why it ended up being portrayed this way. Or, as you suggest, it's a bit of a white wash. In any event you are quite correct that this doesn't portray the typical black experience in the mid 1800's.

First of all, this is a movie about the relationship between a northern woman and a southern men. The A-M's in the film were secondary characters at best. Second, why do you have a problem with depictions of southern whites being polite to slaves? In the south, this is a matter of breeding (to be polite), to everyone no matter their particular race or social class. Also, as it today today, most whites and A-M's tend to ignore the more awkward question of race with a kind of forced politeness. Lastly, serious scholars of the south, both north and south, view your statement that the aristocratic south, "in fact [it] deserved to be destroyed" with distain as the mark of an uneducated person who hasn't the capacity or imagination to look past the simplistic dogma fed them in public schools by the victor--It is known in scholarly circles as the Yankee saint, Southern sinner school. I don't supose it matters to you that slavery existed in the north during and after the War Between the States, and wasn't prohibited in the North until late 1865? That laws were past in the northern states making it a felony for freed slaves to imigrate to the northern states--Only Washington, D.C. was open to immigration. Or that your General Grant owned two slaves during the war? (He rationalized this away with the statement that "good help was hard to find.")

Southron

[deleted]

Ye gods, another dilettante who watched ROOTS and thinks he knows something about slavery.

If you had read anything at all from the period, like diaries, or newspapers, or any legitimate history books on the subject, you'd know that not all slaveowners (both North and South) were Simon Legree.

Most "slaveowners" owned only one or two slaves, and their treatment was generally nothing like that portrayed by Hollywood in recent times. These people had to be trusted with everything in the house, including the most valuable of all -- the owner's children. I'm not saying they were treated as equals, but they were trusted, and often it went both ways.

One example you can read about in accounts of the US's longest and bloodiest family feud, the White-Baker feud, also called the Clay County Wars, which lasted from the early 1800s (maybe), until the 1930s, though there's evidence it isn't quite over yet. At one point Federal troops had to be called in.

One of the Whites left for the California Gold Rush in 1849, with their only slave, and those two worked a small, mildly lucrative claim for a year or so, whereupon White returned to Clay County, KY, leaving the slave to manage the claim. After a time, they sold the claim (with the slave handling the sale in California), and the slave returned -- with the cash -- to the family in Clay County. Doesn't exactly fit in with the crap you usually hear, does it? Probably because made-up lies sell better than the truth.

Were all master-slave relationships like this? Undoubtedly not, but then again neither were they all like the junk you're force-fed by professional race pimps like Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton ... or that scumbag Obama used to worship with.