That is the kind of questions that were shouted at Sarah Sanders as she ended the White House briefing today… and we wonder why we have a problem with race relations in this country.
This manufactured controversy sprouted from an interview John Kelly gave on Monday. In response to a question about Robert E Lee and the confederate statue controversy, Kelly made a few, until recently self-evident, points about the Civil War:
#1 – That the civil war might have been avoidable if BOTH sides had a greater capacity for compromise.
#2 – That it is possible to have respect and honor for your enemy, even in warfare.
#3 – That there was a lot more nuance to the reasons we fought the civil war than JUST being about slavery.
His core point was about the terrible cost of entrenchment and polarity in politics, and a warning about the dangers of the kind of divisions we have recently seen in our nation. Moreover, what Kelly was demonstrating in this interview was nuanced thought, and cognitive dissonance. Though these qualities are disappearing from our public discourse with such rapidity that it may be difficult to recognize them, his critics would do well to learn from his example.
Instead of acknowledging any possible merit to his remarks, or lending any respect to the possibility that this man might know something about the root causes of warfare, the news cycle instantly reduced his comments to a binary thought process: “If you think the Civil War was bad then you must support slavery”. War Bad, Slavery Good or Slavery Bad, War Good. If that is truly the state of our political discourse, we are in very deep trouble.
Aren’t liberals and progressives of the opinion that there is ALWAYS a better alternative to violence? Even if it takes longer, or costs a little more, aren’t evil war mongers the ones who resort to war rather than compromise, and the enlightened peacemakers those who take a more methodical, incremental approach?
When we look at ourselves, Americans tend to over emphasize our role in what is actually our small part in the evolution of human civilization. Slavery wasn’t invented in America, nor was it practiced longer here than elsewhere, nor was it more central to our economy than other practitioners. In truth, our evolving attitudes about slavery was part of a universally evolving sensibility about all matters of equality and human rights. New and developing ideas about how we treat our fellow man were at odds with entrenched economic interests of the time. This was occurring throughout western civilization, on subjects more far reaching than racial slavery. In fact this has been a recurring theme over thousands of years, and continues to this day.
America itself was born of the evolving European attitudes about property, privacy, religion, and human rights. Our developing attitudes about slavery were simply extensions of that evolution, and I would suggest it was THAT evolving attitude that would have inevitably ended slavery, whether the Civil War had been fought or not. In America, 1863 to 1865 was simply the when, and a bloody military conflict that claimed 620,000 lives was simply the how.
Returning to the question: Was there another path to ending slavery that did not require our nation to be divided in a brutal, deadly conflict? Instead of jumping to the conclusion that without the Civil War slavery could not have possibly ended, perhaps there was an alternate, more peaceful, more incremental solution that could have accomplished the same, or even ultimately better result? The lack of compromise made such alternatives impossible. Further, who is to say that even if an alternate path had been chosen, the results would have been better.
Despite the attempts to cast the Civil War as ONLY about slavery, there were more fundamental issues at play. This was largely a fight over state’s rights, and the balance of power between state and federal government. Slavery was the catalyst issue, but the issue itself was deeper. Secession and the declaration of war conflated these issues into a single cause, but there were plenty in the south who did not necessarily support slavery, while still supporting a state’s right to self-government. This would be similar to NOT supporting a football player kneeling during the National Anthem, while strongly supporting a 1st amendment right to allow him to do so without being arrested for it.
Perhaps if we had ended slavery without fighting the civil war we would not have the same racial divides we have today. Perhaps without the military conquest that subjugated an entire region to the will of the federal government, much of the mutual hatred between north and south, black and white that plagued our country in the decades to follow, could have been diffused.
What if slavery had lasted another 50 years, but over a longer, peaceful, incremental phasing out, it had also accelerated the civil rights movement and fostered more harmonious race relations in this country. What if the cost of absolute harmony and equality by 1950 was allowing slavery, in incrementally diminishing numbers, to exist in some form until 1910? Would that be better? Worse? Worth it? Not worth it?
All valid questions. I don’t pretend to have answers. However, pondering these types of questions enhances our perspective. Studying and analyzing history informs our decisions about the future. This is part of the process of learning from our mistakes, and building on our successes.
Until recently General Kelly was universally respected. He is a gold star father, and a highly decorated, retired 4-star general. He has devoted his life to defending this country, and is considered an expert on warfare. With an informed opinion about the Civil War, he offered some thought provoking remarks about lessons we could learn from the civil war. He was calling attention to the danger that erasing history precludes our ability to learn from it.
Instead of engaging in a thoughtful discussion about the state of public discourse, and discussing the importance of national unity, our media and intellectual elite gave us 24 hours of gotcha journalism and race baiting. Anyone who participates in that kind of rhetoric should be ashamed of themselves. I am literally disgusted by their behavior.
