The Diane Rehm Show

It is important to remember that the north was not a true place of equallity and anit-slavery. Several immagrint groups carried out anti-negro activities as they competed for jobs as was evident in the riots of NYC. Also the emancipation proclemation of Lincoln did not free a single slave as any US history student learns it was only to polorize the war and end any chance of alliance that the confederacy had with Great Brittan.

jlynwood,
So to your point, why study the "whys" of the holocaust, since it all comes down to oppression, etc. In reality, historic events are never simplistic, never black and white. We learn and study history not only for informational practices, but to try and avoid the "whys" which led up to the event in the first place.

Is it better to be a slave who is fed, housed, given medical care and work or is it better to owe your life to a corporation where you create profit for a corporation in exchange for a small paycheck and have to find your own way to have a home, food and medical care?
Who is more the 'slave'?
As for the idea of "equality" a quote from "Animal Farm": "Some pigs are more equal than other pigs!" That is where 'equality' stands right now in our once-great nation.

I grew up in the North, but attended 4 years of high school (where the school was integrated & the mascot was the "Fighting Rebel") & 2 years of college in Tennessee.
Folks I spoke to in Tennessee always insisted their rebellion was only about "states' rights" & it was a NOBLE cause --- but it was not really about slavery.
I had a real hard time reconciling this insistence about states' rights with the historical record of denying African Americans living in the South their basic civil rights: i.e the right to vote, the segregation prevalent there (although I admit segregation occurred in the North as well), the frequent terror inflicted on African Americans, the cross burnings, the lynchings & murders of African Americans that were celebrated in the South, etc., etc.
Why it even inspired a very famous jazz singer to write a song about the "Strange fruit that hangs from southern trees".
Can your guests comment about this?
Thank you.

Was the Second Revolution about which one of the guests spoke a novel and revolutionary(!) idea in and of itself, that free people would fight to free unfree people? I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that this would have been the first instance of such action.
Thank you for all you do.

Lincoln never said that blacks were intellectually inferior. In a time when the vast majority believed in black inferiority it would have been absurd for a politician to directly challenge that belief. On several occasions he questioned this believe ...."I do not know if the Negro is our intellectual equal..."

He also thought that blacks were so hated that they would be better served by sending them back to Africa. At his invitation a black delegation came to the White House and changed his thinking. After that meeting he never again suggested sending the slaves to another country.

I went UVa and found the same claim of states rights and had the same feelings of irritation. I used to ask them, "states rights to do what?....enslave people!"
Cross burning and general terrorism came after the war, when blacks "threatened" whites by getting educated and becoming middle class farmers, workers, teachers, lawyers, etc.

JesseK asked, "Could you please ask your guests if the Civil War *literally* pitted brother against brother, father against son, etc. I've always heard it described this way. Is this true, or just hyperbole?"

Not hyperbole at all. Most of Robert E. Lee's family opposed -- at least initially -- his resigning his commission to fight for Virginia, and two of his cousins rose to relatively high rank in the union forces. Percival Drayton, Farragut's Flag Captain (i.e., chief of operations) in the battle of Mobile Bay, was from one of the wealthiest planter families in the Charleston Area. Early in the war, he commanded a naval vessel that was part of the bombardment of a fort commanded by his own brother. And George Henry Thomas, a Virginian patrician with a background very similar to Lee's was disowned by his family when he remained with the Union. (It is said his sisters turned his portrait to the wall when they learned of his decision.) There was also the famous case, in the Battle of Galveston, where a Confederate staff officer went looking after the battle ended for his son, an officer aboard a U.S. naval vessel in the harbor. He found him, mortally wounded. The young man's last words, when asked if he could be made more comfortable, were supposedly, "no, my father is here." Those words are engraved on his tombstone.

So yes, it happened. Sometimes figuratively, but sometimes literally.

I hope that you get to my comment during the show.
Both of my parents had relatives who fought in the Civil War on the Union and Southern sides. I have photos of my great grandfathers who served. My ancestors were crackers in GA and most likely never owned slaves; we've only found one name in our geneaology which might have been a female slave. However, the great grandfather that I was proud of for so long was a man who fought with Nathan Bedford Forest. I was horrified to learn recently that NBForest was the man who started the KKK and cannot feel that pride anymore. I distinctly remember about 6th grade or 7th realizing that the Stars and Bars was not a flag to be proud of. I was shocked to realize the truth behind the flag. But I do still identify with the people who hated Sherman for the destruction he brought to the South. There are still places where this can be seen today. His wholesale disregard for the women and children, both black and white, still angers many of us. It was slash and burn at its worst. Sherman's March, its destruction of homes, farms, families who had no defense still rankles in the families who remain in the South.

This really helped me to understand the mechanisms of a system I must today grapple with. Who would have thought another study of the Civil war would help me understand how to negotiate the roadblocks of my current life. We have Lincoln and Brennen, both holding public office, driven to mold policies inconsistent with their own ‘integrated’ beliefs. Stern and Wermiel write of Brennen’s compartmentalized positions and views, where he ruled for women’s rights but abhorred hiring them, similar to Lincolns uncertainties with the nature of equality. It shows how our leaders can lack integration/integrity and it is indeed a human condition, a lesson we learn over and over again, slowly moving towards the country we claim ourselves to be. Each generation has its own lesson, challenge and task to faithfully fulfill for the next. We learn our weaknesses, strive for strength and hopefully progressively move toward true equality.

You can't change minds or hearts so easily. People will always hate, etc. What we *can* do however, is to systematically make it easier to prevent things from happening, i.e. taking diplomatic or (last resort) military action to prevent more holocausts. But human nature being what it is, we can't turn the "inhumane" switch off on our collective brains.

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