MovieChat Forums > Gettysburg (1993) Discussion > "Different dreams. So very sad."

"Different dreams. So very sad."

posted 9 years ago by Stevicus-2
3 replies | jump to latest

Recently rewatching Gettysburg, I found myself pondering a bit more regarding Col. Fremantle's speech about the opposing sides in the Civil War.

Col. Arthur Freemantle: You call yourselves Americans, but you're really just transplanted Englishmen. Look at your names: Lee, Hood, Longstreet, Jackson, Stuart...

Lieutenant General James Longstreet: My people were Dutch...

Col. Arthur Freemantle: And the same for your adversaries: Meade, Hooker, Hancock, and - shall I say - Lincoln! The same God, same language, same culture and history, same songs, stories, legends, myths - different dreams. Different dreams. So very sad.

I won't claim to be an expert on the Civil War, but I think I know at least the basics of the causes and what led up to it. The country was sharply divided over slavery, which was also related to disputes over the economic and political direction both sides wanted the country to take.

But "different dreams"? I'm just wondering what exactly that might refer to. It seems like a somewhat mystical description of the underlying cause of the Civil War. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I was curious as to what others thought about this line from the movie.

[–] GreenGoblinsOckVenom86 9 years ago

But "different dreams"? I'm just wondering what exactly that might refer to. It seems like a somewhat mystical description of the underlying cause of the Civil War. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I was curious as to what others thought about this line from the movie.

I thought he was talking about the difference between Americans and British people with the "different dreams" statement.

Green Goblin is great! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1L4ZuaVvaw

[–] indy_go_blue44 9 years ago

Remember that this is written by a 1990 person reflecting on the similarities and differences between Northern and Southern US citizens.

We can argue about whether slavery was the cause of the war, or was it states rights? I don't think we can argue that for the South it was politically dominated by a planter aristocracy, and had the Confederacy won its independence it would have remained and developed as even more of a planter aristocracy.

I'm not going to say that in the North, it wasn't becoming a bankers and big business plutocracy because it was. But the Northern "dream", still common today, is that with "luck and pluck" anyone can become a millionaire when that's obviously not the case.

Different ideas about what the country should be, how it should be governed, and who should be in charge IMO are those different "dreams."

[–] tallkennj 8 years ago

I think you are reading too much into it. Fremantle... at least as presented by Shaara... was a guy with his head in the clouds who was prone to flowery language and philosophical pondering. He was just, as you would expect from a guy with his personality, turning a simple statement on the shared history of Americans and Brits into an over-wrought, over-emotional appeal to the heart.