Here’s a quiz: What song did President Lincoln have the band play shortly after the surrender of Lee’s Forces at Appomattox?
In 1869 President Grant, filling various positions of his administration, nominated James Longstreet as Surveyor of Customs for the port of New Orleans. General James Longstreet, West Point class of 1842 (Grant was class of ‘43) served with Grant in Missouri and in Mexico. Longstreet went on to command various units in the Confederate army, ending the war commanding the 1st and 3rd Corps of Lee’s army. But Longstreet was a firm believer in Reconstruction; the New York Times hailed the nomination as an important “gesture of reconciliation.”
Reconstruction. Reconciliation. Those are interesting ideas.
Grant was a strong believer in both. He wrote: “[B]ut for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, I believe the great majority of Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously, would have been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their government.”
Grant, like Lincoln, believed that through a strong reconstruction effort, and the end to persecution of southerners for any part they played in the rebellion, we could rebuild the nation, and place the sins of the past behind us. Lincoln was, of course, assassinated by fanatics who would not let go. Andrew Johnson became president and he was uninterested in the sweeping Reconstruction that had been germinating at the end of the war – and which arguably would’ve required Lincoln’s leadership and moral authority to implement. For four years Johnson fought Congress’s efforts to implement meaningful political change in the South, while Democrats quickly regained control. President Grant tried to enforce Reconstruction and for several years was successful, but eventually, Democrats in Congress put together a coalition that hamstrung Reconstruction and forced Grant’s hand. Reconstruction ground to a halt by the end of Grant’s second term.
It’s worth remembering, as we continue to work ourselves into a frenzy, that Grant (and Lincoln’s) concerns about Reconstruction – not only of the south but of the nation as a whole, embraced the concept of reconciliation, reconciliation that included not only the law, but also embraced civility. The southerners were, as Lincoln and Grant both said on more than one occasion, once again our fellow citizens.
Herman Wouk ends his epic “War and Remembrance” with the comment that “the end of war lies in remembrance.” He is, in part, correct. We must remember how wars start, what leads us into wars, their horrible cost, and try to not repeat past mistakes.
But, he’s partly wrong. A large part of seemingly every war is anger over past grievances, wrongs committed by men we’ve never met, against relatives who were long dead before we first drew breath.
In trouble spots around the world we see time and again how people won’t let go of ancient hurts. They hold grudges about sins they never experienced, committed by people they never met.
Consider this quite true story related by an associate: an old man from the Balkans lamented that “they [the Serbs] killed my gramps.” The word he used for gramps was generic, meaning any male ancestor past his father. Several drinks later, as his anger expanded to fury, he finally revealed that “gramps” had died in the 1830s. Yet he couldn’t let go; his anger at the Serbs was visceral and profound. He “remembered” that wrong – committed against a man who’d been dead more and a century when he was born – every day. He nurtured the hate, keeping it well “fertilized” and well “watered.”
That particular remembrance is something we need to avoid.
The only way to end such anger is to, quite simply, forget it. Leave the past to the past. As the Good Book tells us, let the dead bury the dead.
Yet today there seems to be many in our society obsessed with grievance. No crime, no matter how old, can go unpunished; no sin must ever be forgiven. That way not only madness lies, but ruin. Lincoln once said that this nation would never be destroyed from the outside. But it could be torn apart from within. We need to take that wisdom to heart.
As for Lincoln: Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on 09 April 1865. On the 10th a crowd formed in front of the White House, a band among them. Lincoln asked the band to play Dixie, as he “always liked the tune.”
Copyright 2017 Arrias
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