Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire History Channel: Grant

History Channel is notorious for those many long commercial breaks. Last night it was so maddening that I too will now set the remaining episodes to record.

Did the documentary ding ole USG any for owning/renting slaves or did it just kinda gloss over or outright omit it? Maybe blamed it on his wife? That didn't work for Adam in the garden of Eden.

Leonardo DeCaprio in charge............... Really? This should be good.

I watched Barkskins.

Oh and don’t forget the stupidity on the Campfire doesn’t just stick to Leupold bashing and fast twist, Yankee hating is another sign of supreme intelligence.

Are you feeling insecure about being a Yankee or are you just showing your anti-Confederacy bias?

He's just illuminating Lincoln Derangement Syndrome.

Apparently he let the one slave he had go free instead of selling him. Lee didn’t have slaves either, his wife’s family did.

Don’t recall it being mentioned.

Television history specials are just that.

Television! The even greater opiate of the masses.

Read a book!!! Or six!!!

Yes, and like every southern slave owners bad themed production it played up abuses and whipping of slaves which I don't doubt for a minute really happened to some but was no where near as common and often nor condoned by all slave owners as it's always implied, if for no other reason simply because a healthy, physically sound, working age slave was not only quite valuable but a critically needed asset.

Of course as so typical of cruel slave owner narrative productions early on in the first episode this photo of "Whipped Peter" was shown: [Linked Image] but what they omitted was this: Scars of a whipped slave (April 2, 1863, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. Original caption: "Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the overseer. The very words of poor Peter, taken as he sat for his picture."

Not surprised. It does not fit the narrative of trying to make a guy from the 19th century a hero to a 21st century audience. IIRC, Grant owned one black man for a brief period before the Civil war and freed him. I don't think anyone knows the particulars of whether Grant bought the man himself or was given him by someone else, perhaps his father in law.

Grant's father was an abolitionist but Grant himself was ambivalent enough on the issue to marry into a slave holding family. Grant's wife had a few slaves which he worked/rented when he attempted to be a farmer which he failed at. They don't really know if she actually owned them herself or if her father was letting her "borrow" them while keeping ownership himself out of concern that Grant might free them or talk his wife into doing so. After the failed farming deal, Grant went to work for his father in law at his plantation where they of course worked slaves which I don't think were freed until after the war.

I don't hold any of that against Grant himself. It was a different time. Just don't care for the hypocritical and downright fictional portrayal of the big players of that era by what passes for history now days.

I was really hoping that the History Channel was learning they should get back to history.

Episode I was awful IMO.

In fairness, he played one helluva Rick Dalton.

I haven't read most of the previous posts, nor do I intend to, but I thought it was pretty good. Prior to this, who even knew Grant existed prior to Vicksburg?

He had more than his share of demerits at West Point, Lee had zero.

I suppose it doesn’t matter though.

This flic/series is going to be the Neil Young version I take it?

On my TV at least, I was unable to record and skip the commercials. When I went to view the recording, it went to the commercial and you were unable to skip through it.

Paul

I was hoping they'd talk more about Grant instead of diving right into the Civil War and Lincoln and and his in-laws.

Seems like they muddied the waters much too quickly and it steered the story away from the man.

No reason television can not be a good as books.

A lot of books are as much trash as is much of TV.

This History series is some of the best so far.

Absolutely, no doubt. But I believe it’s those very publications that producers and screenwriters are using for their primary references. And vaguely at that.

One learns to deversify their research on any subject. Especially history.

Send the History Channel folks a message, saying you want a series on Lee as well. They certainly can't deny that it would make for good ratings.