John White’s essay takes small bits of partial truths to paint a broad swath of “whitewash” over the unsettling realities of historical facts about the roots of slavery, implicit in the secession movement. Saying good people owned slaves is akin to reiterating the old saw about Hitler being a vegetarian. Lincoln offered the Union Army command to Robert E. Lee, who declined, then lead the Southern army, even though he thought secession by Virginia was wrong. A thousand non sequetors do not weave a coherent fabric of history.
The seething Southern resentment over losing the Civil War has continued to well up in novel guises over the past 150 years, including peculiarities like the version of polite, even loving Christian slave owners. Ask Mr. White about whether his ancestor would spontaneously have freed his slaves without a Confederate defeat? Ask the slaves’ descendants if they would willingly return to work for White on a modern plantation if it meant surrendering their freedom? Liberal minds optimistically see an historical rise in human rights and freedoms; we don’t deny other atrocities in other times, by other peoples, but certainly don’t use those examples to justify or defend perpetuation of modern abuses just because someone else did something worse. We call it progress.
