Modern Reconstruction

On a cosmic level, it's funny how history cycles around. Perhaps there's something innately embedded in our human strain that emulates the rotational nature of heavenly bodies and galaxies.

The orbital inclination of events is widely acknowledged in adages that portray nothing as new, history as a broken record, and so forth--even to pronounce doom on those who don't overtly study the past in order to avoid it coming around again.

The Greeks may not be much with money these days, but their way with words is legendary. The 5th Century BC dramatist Aeschylus is often credited with verbalizing the notion that the first casualty in war is truth, which applies whether battle lines are cultural or military.

There have been plenty of polls demonstrating that, on average, Americans know fewer truths about history than they should. But ignorance of the law is no excuse for unlawful behavior, and neither is ignorance of facts for untrue perceptions.

Back when the Civil War was an actuality for millions of Americans, rather than a dumbed-down historical mace for race-baiters, there was a faction in Congress that wanted to not only defeat the Confederacy in battle, but also conquer, crush and cruelly punish the people in the rebel states.

They labeled themselves Radical Republicans, and despite landslide approval in 1864 of President Abraham Lincoln's reconciliatory policy stances toward the South, his assassination provided Radicals the chance to happily rain ruin, injustice and unconstitutional deprivation of rights on the vanquished Southern states.

Diametrically opposed to Honest Abe's approach, the Radicals adopted a "malice toward all, charity to none" philosophy about American citizens in the former Confederacy.

After 150 revolutions of the earth around the sun, the ugly history of Reconstruction is dawning anew. This time the culprits seething with malice and seeking to once again crush and conquer the old Confederacy are the Radical Revisionists.

They either know little of history or, worse and more likely, don't care. In their ideological war to reconstruct the past, they slay facts with near-nuclear efficiency.

Unlike 1865, there are no living survivors among the Confederate states to victimize. So today's Radicals must be content with the conquest, subjugation and destruction of battle flags, statues, graves and other symbols.

The Memphis City Council wants to disentomb Nathan Bedford Forrest. Why stop there? There's a whole host of Confederate officers and soldiers buried on federal property up in Arlington National Cemetery.

We can't kill rebel soldiers again; but we can slander their sacrifice, dishonor their courage, erase their statuary and disrupt their gravesites.

Heck, it's only a matter of time till some truly inspired Reconstructionist radicals get around to dethroning Lincoln himself and demanding demolition of his monument.

After all, in the same document that freed the slaves in the seceded states, he offered those states the chance to keep their slaves--just as loyal states like Maryland and Delaware had--if they would only lay down their arms within 100 days and renounce their secession.

Little historical caveats and complexities like that can douse even the most Radical Revisionist's parade.

Lincoln's main purpose, as he always said, was winning the war to save the Union, and if freeing no slaves or freeing all of them accomplished that goal, he would do either.

He also was a proponent of colonization, believing it impossible for whites and blacks to ever achieve social and political equality.

That's the problem with trying to reconstruct history to conform to modern litmus tests. Eventually, even a Lincoln fails to measure up to the revised version.

Following the war, the Radical Republicans were eager to stomp the former Confederacy like a bug in the dust.

The problem was this: If the Confederate states never seceded, they still enjoyed all the constitutional protections as citizens. So much for denying them fair trials, appeals, the right to vote and other designs of oppression the Radicals had in mind.

As President Andrew Johnson told Radicals in his day, you can't have it both ways. But Radicals want it whichever way suits their agenda; logic and facts are both uncomfortably confining.

With Lincoln's death perished the hope for a re-United States of America based on binding the nation's wounds to achieve and cherish a lasting peace.

The Radicals were free to mask their anti-South hatred with lip service to "worthy causes" like black suffrage--as long as it only affected Confederate states (most Union states prohibited blacks from voting, too).

Reconstructionist Radicals are again clamoring at the national conscience, eager to demonize a select segment of the population and impose, if they can, zealous persecution against fellow Americans.

Education is the best protector against tyranny of thought. The Civil War was the furthest thing from a tidy affair of Northern right and Southern wrong, and it's an intellectual atrocity to apply modern attitudes in drawing conclusions about actions in centuries past.

Reconstructionists had their malicious way once, to the country's detriment.

Let's hope we as a nation have matured and learned since then, and this time around we can collectively choose to live up to Lincoln's call of bearing malice toward none--on both sides.

Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial on 07/17/2015

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