America has a Hothead Problem

While returning from a trip to see family, my wife commented that we were driving through an almost never-ending stream of Civil War battlefields that reinforce the military losses of the Civil War without reinforcing the moral meaning of what happened.

New York and Virginia bore a large part of America’s war history. The Revolution’s crucial battles were fought in New York before England reconcentrated on the South, at which point Virginia bore the brunt of the fighting.

The Civil War was even more concentrated on Virginia battlefields. After Gettysburg, Lincoln had enough of his Northern generals, some skilled but unwilling to fight, and called for Grant and Sherman who had been fighting and winning in the west, to take over the battle in the East. Sherman had a brief nervous breakdown, realizing he was going to be responsible for innumerable deaths, but though Southerners don’t give him credit for it, Sherman used tactics that forced his opponents back with minimal loss of life, though at the cost of food supplies for the Confederate army. By the time Sherman’s army had marched to the sea, what he was really threatening was to march north, join Grant’s army and crush Lee. Lee of course understood and surrendered first.

Until then, Lee kept a lot of pressure on Grant, but Grant didn’t back off, and kept moving his army to flank Lee, so the battle continued in a never-ending series of battles and battlegrounds with tremendous losses and sites for future monuments all over Virginia.

Apologists for the Confederacy see the cleverness of Confederate generals and the overwhelming power of northern armies. But they miss the larger moral meaning of the Civil War. Denying the significance of slavery hides the huge moral failure at its heart. Civil War history was blanketed under a century of apologetics until better historians poked through the nonsense.

• The War would not have happened but for slavery.
• Slavery wasn’t “good” for the slaves – lack of freedom is a disaster, not an advantage. I don’t suggest you try it.
• What America did after the Civil War wasn’t about vengeance, as some have been taught; it was about freedom. It’s time we take pride in that accomplishment.

Democracy is imperfect, but it allows us to correct mistakes, great moral wrongs and mistreatment of others. The Civil War was a very expensive example of righting a great wrong.

Ironically, at the time the Constitution was written, prominent Virginians – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason and others – knew slavery was morally wrong but expected it to go away, perhaps gradually as Pennsylvania, on Virginia’s northern border, did it. But hotheads pushed for war to protect slavery.

Some southern governors are trying to keep the Civil War alive in America by trying to erase the injustice of slavery, erase the accomplishments of the descendants of slaves, and allow schoolchildren to grow up thinking that southern mistreatment of African-Americans was perfectly OK, somehow manly.

America has a hothead problem and we have to learn to stand up to our hotheads and continue making progress for decency, and the great American ideals embodied in the 14^th Amendment – life, liberty and equality for everyone.

Trump and his MAGA friends better accept those ideals before they face the modern equivalents of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and the bloodbath they are arguing for, with their guns, gun rights claims, threats and intimidation of witnesses and public officials, and their private unregulated militias. The sooner we quash those armed hotheads the better.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on April 23, 2024.

JOURNEY TO FREEDOM

States are prohibiting teaching about events none of us will ever forget. They’re banning history and discussion of the damage done by years of violence and discrimination. But Paul Murray did his part in keeping it available.

You may know Paul. His children went through Albany Schools. He headed the School Board and taught at Siena College. In 1966, Paul went to Mississippi with the American Friends Service Committee to help with the Civil Rights Movement. Later he went back as an expert witness in civil rights litigation.

At Siena, Paul organized a course on the Civil Rights Movement. Instead of lecturing, he got people from this area with personal experience in the Movement to discuss it with his students, and took some of his students to Mississippi to meet people Paul had worked with.

Students loved the course and made a video of Professor Murray’s last class. But the passing of someone he’d invited made Paul realize the need to preserve their memories and keep the history alive.

Here’s a sample.

Miki Conn worked for Bayard Rustin, principal organizer of the March on Washington, where King shared his dream. Miki organized the fleet of busses that brought people to the March – a huge undertaking that brought some hundred thousand people to Washington in 1963 – then she ran the information booth. Paul had her talk about it.

My wife and her college friends integrated a movie theatre in Greensboro, NC, while the famous Woolworth sit-ins were taking place downtown – Paul asked her to talk about it.

Paul had me explain crucial legal cases to his students but since I was at the March and heard King describe his dream, Paul had me talk about that too.

Alice Green grew up in the Adirondacks and fought discrimination of every kind in this area since childhood, creating and running the Center for Law and Justice. Paul had her talk about it.

Julie Kabat wrote about her late brother who taught in a Mississippi freedom school in the summer of 1964. Paul brought some of her brother’s students to describe how different it felt to be treated with respect by a young white man.

Nell Stokes was a teenager in Montgomery, Alabama, when the community organized the bus boycott to protest being forced to give their seats to white people and move to the back of the bus. Nell volunteered with the cab company providing rides during the bus boycott and talked about it at Paul’s invitation.

Those are just a sample. Now retired from teaching, Paul wanted to preserve their experience for anyone interested in the Civil Rights Movement. He arranged interviews, a videographer, and inclusion on the Siena College website. We just celebrated the video’s release. (It should be available at Siena.edu/Journey to Freedom by the time this airs, indexed by those interviewed.)

For some participants, religion played a large part. I know Paul is deeply involved in describing the efforts of the Catholic Church to address the violence and segregation to which African-Americans were subject. It’s a matter of great pride in the Jewish community that there were rabbis on the podium with Martin Luther King – after slavery in America and the Holocaust in Europe, they understood each other, the humanity of people of all backgrounds, the cause of freedom, the threat of racial hatred, the violence that follows and the importance of overcoming it.

Compensating for wrongs done is what law usually does. What’s unfair is letting it fester. Thanks to Dr. Murray and Siena for making this history available to all.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on February 6, 2024.