Seeing Lee Through the Eyes of Slaves and Planters

The American Conservative:

As partisans on the “antifa” left and the “alt” right eagerly array themselves to re-fight the Civil War, I find myself casting my mind back to the final weeks of that conflict, and turning to the words of President Lincoln’s second inaugural addressfor guidance in how to think about the questions of memory and national reconciliation. 

Though the war was not yet over, and Lincoln disclaimed even at that late date any power to foresee its end, reconciliation was the theme. But the address did not begin with the call to bind up the nation’s wounds. Rather, it began by reminding his audience of how those wounds came to be inflicted in the first place, and how to understand the justice of the conflict in which the Union was still engaged.

Cont....