A century-and-half after Gettysburg, the nation continues to test its endurance

Many of them stand like pickets along what was 150 years ago the battle lines of the Union and Confederate armies at Gettysburg, monuments, memorials and markers to the estimated 165,000 soldiers who fought there – and thousands who died there – those three days in July 1863.

The South’s monuments appear relatively new compared to many of the North’s weathered edifices, and the reason for this raises the question about national unity since the Civil War divided the country over race and human rights.

America has undoubtedly made significant progress. In the last 150 years, African Americans have made an arduous journey from white men’s property, treated inhumanely and indifferently, to leaders in the nation that once enslaved them.

It’s something to marvel that a century-and-a-half after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the house once divided between North and South is led by a president who is not only African-American, but who is half black and half white.

Yet, since the guns of Gettysburg fell silent, blacks have endured endless battles in order to achieve equality in their own country, despite Lincoln’s proclamation freeing them; despite adoption of the Constitution’s 13^th amendment abolishing slavery; despite the 14^th amendment affirming citizenship and rights to all people regardless of race; and despite court decisions that shattered school segregation and upheld voting rights.

Our nation remains troubled over race. Just look at the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act that ensured states, particularly Southern states, could not deny blacks and other minorities their right to vote. Supporters of the decision seem unable to understand why African Americans are offended by this.

Is there somewhere in the murky recesses of the national psyche the sense that the country remains divided 148 years since the end of the Civil War?

The process of re-uniting the country after the war was hard. Reconstruction of the South was handled poorly by both sides, though could it have been handled any differently? Re-unification also was long; perhaps 100 years long, perhaps still going on in one form or another.

Consider one example: petitions signed by thousands of residents in as many as 40 states calling for their state to secede from the union while other states have pending bills in their statehouses to declare financial sovereignty from the federal government.

Monumental division

            Not long after the Civil War, Northern veterans began to erect granite obelisks, domed-temples and other edifices in Gettysburg. The monuments now litter the placid Pennsylvania farm fields and rocky slopes, where grave diggers collected about 9,000 soldiers of the blue and gray killed during the July 1-3 battle, which became the war’s turning point, leading to the South’s defeat two years later.

            Initially, the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association focused on the Union monuments, buying land along the Union lines. None of the Southern states bothered to participate in securing land or proposing monuments on Confederate lines, according to Ronald Lee’s “The Origin and Evolution of the National Park Idea.”

One group of Confederate veterans did erect a battlefield monument in 1886, but the Southern states, partly because the war had depleted their treasuries, did not begin to erect monuments until 1917, the year the United States entered World War I. That year, Virginia built a massive edifice with a bronze Lee astride his horse, Traveller.     

            It became apparent that what was needed was a national park in which both sides were represented equally. In 1890, U.S. Rep. Byron Cutcheon of Michigan, who fought for the Union, made the first attempt to get a bill through Congress.

            The congressman commended the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association’s efforts as “a work of love and grateful pride to the loyal states,” but, he reminded fellow congressmen, “There were two armies in Gettysburg.”

            For the monuments to accurately reflect the history of the battle, and to properly preserve the battlefield, Cutcheon argued, it should not be left to the states, either North or South: “It must be done by the national government or remain undone.”

In 1895, Gettysburg became the first of the national parks and the overseer of all monuments. Yet, Confederate veterans, even with the battle now 32 years behind them, generally were not eager to erect monuments in a place of defeat for them.

It is an understandable attitude since soldiers are taught to hate the enemy, even if they happen to be their brothers. Long after the war and into the 20^th century, the South’s sons believed they were fighting “northern aggression.”

Northerner soldiers also viewed the conflict in narrow terms. Lincoln found it maddening at times when his generals failed to grasp the aim of the war. It was not to defeat an opposing nation, he would tell them, but to reunite a nation – a nation with a founding principle that all people are created equal.

            As General Robert E. Lee’s army retreated across the Potomac River to Virginia after the battle, Union General George Meade would telegraph the White House that he was pursing the “invaders” back to their country, to which Lincoln reminded him those invaders were his fellow countrymen. 

 

Reunions and reflections

            Sometime in the 1890s, a few veterans of the armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia began to meet on occasion at small reunions. At one held in Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, the captured sword of Confederate Brig. General Lewis Armistead, killed at Gettysburg, was returned to the South.

The reunions helped to heal wounds made when the nation was split asunder, but they also, perhaps more so, allowed aging soldiers to reminisce. In 1908, a former Union general, Philadelphian Henry Shippen Huidekoper, made the suggestion to Pennsylvania Gov. Edwin Stuart about having a 50^th Gettysburg reunion at the battlefield and inviting as many veterans as possible.

The following year, the Legislature created the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Commission and established the event’s first program, a “Peace Jubilee,” according to a report to the General Assembly. Congress appropriated $150,000 for the event and directed the War Department to build tent camps to accommodate the 53,000 veterans – only about 9,000 of them former Confederate veterans – who would attend.

At their 50^th reunion in 1913, the now elderly fighters were photographed wearing the blue and gray, standing on either side of a battlefield fence shaking hands. In fact, the former enemies greeted each other warmly, despite concern by one Southern colonel that “there might be unpleasant differences, at least, between the blue and gray.”

It was an electrifying moment, a reflection of national unity, but in 1913 African Americans still struggled in the South to achieve basic human and constitutional rights – living under white-instituted segregation that enslaved emotionally and psychologically.

While Gettysburg’s veterans spent six days reminiscing, parading, and accepting honors from President Woodrow Wilson – “We shall not forget the splendid valor” – the Ku Klux Klan roamed the South, terrorizing African Americans.  

The struggle against this tyranny went on for many decades, well into the middle of the 20^th century. Remnants of this oppression persist even today in the 21^st century as every presidential election reveals efforts to block or restrict minority voting rights.

 

Three Presidents      

            Many presidents have visited Gettysburg to offer gestures of peace and healing, but three – Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt – had led or would soon lead the nation through the crucible of major conflict that in its aftermath re-defined the nation.

            Lincoln arrived after the battle and consecrated the battlefield and the meaning of the war – “the proposition that all men are created equal” – with the Gettysburg Address that resonates as strongly today as it did in 1863.

Wilson, a Virginian born four years before the war broke out in 1861, came on the last day of the 1913 reunion to bless the Confederate and Union camaraderie and make an attempt at healing words: “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather … the quarrel forgotten.”

Yet, Wilson was a segregationist and, many historians believe, a racist, based on his own writings and actions. As president, his administration imposed harsh workplace policies that barred blacks from holding federal jobs. Hardly had the war been a quarrel nor had anyone forgotten it, least of all African Americans.

People are complicated, Wilson no less so. At his insistence during World War I,

African Americans received equal battle pay, but they fought in segregated units. 

            Roosevelt arrived by train from his home in Hyde Park, NY, for the 75^th and what would be the final reunion, in 1938. The battle’s last 25 veterans joined 1,800 veterans of the Civil War, most of them in their nineties. Some had to be carried.

On the last day in the northwest corner of the battlefield, two veterans, one Union and one Confederate, let fall the drape that covered the tall Eternal Light Peace Memorial that Roosevelt dedicated.

In his speech paying homage to the assembled veterans FDR was surely thinking about and seemed to even hint at, Europe’s gathering storm that would engulf the world in little more than a year: “It seldom helps to wonder how a statesmen of one generation would surmount the crisis of another.”

Unlike Wilson, Roosevelt understood the Civil War and Gettysburg’s symbolism was about how the nation would meet the endless challenges to its declared principles of equality and justice:

“The task assumes different shapes at different times. Sometimes the threat to popular government comes from political interests, sometimes from economic interests, sometimes we have to beat off all of them together. But the challenge is always the same – whether each generation facing its own circumstances can summon the practical devotion to attain and retain that greatest good for the greatest number which this government of the people was created to ensure.”

The 150^th Anniversary

The National Park employees at Gettysburg call the July 1-3 period the “high holy days,” according to recent news accounts. The battlefield and its nearly 1,400 monuments is a hallowed place for pilgrimage, a shrine for the history buff, re-enactor and the curious.  

An estimated 10,000 re-enactors dressed in blue and gray demonstrated the battle last week as part of the 150^th anniversary event, another 15,000 are expected for a re-enactment this week. Tens of thousands from the north, south, east and west are expected to attend the series of events planned this week.

They come to learn about the tactics and strategies of the battle, not whether the national unity and the struggle for equality and justice are causes everlasting. And there will be those with a Northern perspective – why did Lee send Gen. George Pickett into the last desperate charge that devastated his regiment and ended the battle? And with a Southern perspective – how did Mead win that fight?

One thing remains true about the country that, as Lincoln said, was “conceived in liberty” and “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” We continue to test whether our nation, “so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

IRS tempest: Teapot Dome and Beyond

Like thunder rolling across the plains, the latest political scandal started as a low rumble a year ago and exploded with sound and fury two weeks ago. The congressional hearings have begun with the jawing and snapping from partisans out for blood.

            What can either side expect (hope) to find in the Internal Revenue Service’s practice of focusing on conservative political groups, notably the Tea Party, who sought nonprofit, thus tax-exempt, status as so-called social-welfare organizations?

            More precisely, what can they uncover that the investigation conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration didn’t find? A missed memo that has the president ordering the practice? A liberal grand conspiracy to destroy America?

            Perhaps, but the hearings and investigations also could lead to the less nefarious, nothing more than bureaucratic incompetence; even, dare say a tempest in a teapot?

            This political scandal, as with many, has scale and headlines – “IRS targeted conservative groups” – that compel partisans and pundits to over-react with one hearing after another, one investigation after another, and one expose after another.

            Often, there is no there there, as the White House has said about the endless Benghazi terrorist attack hearings, but congressional investigations can sometimes uncover wrongdoing, even when they look like partisan point-scoring in the lurch-for-power game.

            The precedent was set for this nearly a century ago during the presidency of Republican Warren G. Harding, who had one of the more scandal-ridden administrations in American history. The scandal du jour then was known as Teapot Dome.

The leasing of U.S. naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and Elk Hills in California to two private oil companies seemed suspicious to Montana Democratic Sen. Thomas Walsh because Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall had not sought competitive bids.

In 1921, Harding ordered control of Teapot Dome and Elk Hills transferred from the Navy Department to the Interior Department. The navy, after Secretary Fall’s persuasive insistence, transferred control in 1922.

That same year, Fall leased the oil production rights at Teapot Dome to Mammoth Oil, a subsidiary of Sinclair Oil, and Elk Hills to Pan American Petroleum. That neither lease was competitively bid was legal under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920.

 Nonetheless, a Wyoming oil producer complained to his senator that Sinclair got the rights through a secret deal. Republican Sen. Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin lead an investigation, during which he initially believed Fall innocent, until his Senate office was ransacked. Then he, too, became as suspicious as Walsh.

For two years, Walsh conducted a fruitless inquiry into Teapot Dome, uncovering nothing illegal, even though records kept disappearing mysteriously. Just as things were about to wrap up, the Montana senator uncovered evidence that revealed Fall had gotten kickbacks from the oil companies – a $100,000 loan to start.

That broke open the scandal. Civil and criminal lawsuits ensued; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the contracts were obtained through fraudulent and corrupt means, and the oil reserves were returned to the navy.

Fall was found to have received more than half a million dollars in kickbacks. He was fined $100,000 and sentenced to one year behind bars, the first time in history that a presidential cabinet member was sent to prison for his actions while in office, according to historical accounts.

Since then, scandal and investigation have become part of the political diet in Washington because, as the Teapot Dome scandal showed, no matter how thorough an investigation, there could still be something damning that was missed or not yet found.

Expect the congressional investigations into the IRS’s targeting practice, and the Benghazi scandal, and whatever other scandals come our way, to continue for a long time because there could be that bit of yet unfound evidence.

 Incidentally, the Teapot Dome scandal had no political effect in the following elections of helping Democrats win or Republicans lose. 

 

Gun Crazy

           Listening these many weeks to the gun debate within the gun culture brings to mind a little known 1950 film noir called “Gun Crazy.”

            It’s actually quite good, and if you get a chance you should watch it, whether you support or oppose guns and gun-control. The plot and its two main characters, Bart and Laurie, seem to capture the dichotomy within the ranks of the National Rifle Association’s members.

            The plot features Bart, who loves guns, they make him feel good inside. So much so that he steals a pistol at age 14 and is arrested. Bart’s family and friends testify in court that Bart is responsible and would never use guns to harm anyone. While the judge believes their testimony he nonetheless is compelled to send Bart to reform school.

            Years later, after reform school and a stint in the army, Bart returns home and catches up with his friends. They go to a field where he demonstrates his sharp-shooting skills with his elegant gun collection. They ask him about his plans for the future, and Bart says he wants to work for a gun manufacturer like Remington.

            That night, Bart meets Laurie, a sharpshooter at a carnival. They burn with passion for each other, but Laurie warns him she’s been bad. For awhile, the lovers enjoy life, performing together as carnival sharpshooters until circumstances leave them out of work. Laurie wants to turn to crime and use their guns to steal, from people and banks.

            Bart rejects the idea, and instead wants to sell their guns and work at Remington, but Laurie argues against it. “There isn't enough money in those guns for the kind of start I want,” she says. “Bart, I want things, a lot of things, big things. I don't want to be afraid of life or anything else.

           Laurie threatens to leave him and he goes along with her. Their crime wave gets out of hand. After trying to stop Laurie from shooting people who get in her way, Bart finds himself firing his gun at a pursuing police car and realizes he’s losing control.

            “Laurie, listen to me, listen close,” Bart confides in her. “Something happened when I was scared. All the time I was shooting that tire, I kept thinking how easy it would be to shoot the driver instead. I kept fighting myself. I'm not a killer. I don't want to be a killer. I don't like this kind of life. I've had enough.”

            Laurie hasn’t and before long she’s killing people without compunction, without the thought that Bart puts into his use of guns.

This is the dichotomy in the National Rifle Association. Its membership seems largely filled with Barts, people who enjoy and appreciate firearms, but also respect guns for what they are – weapons, to handle carefully and safely.

            NRA leaders like Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent sound like Lauries, blocking, without compunction, regulations to make a largely non-gun owning society safer – such as universal background checks that most of its members support.

            They claim to fear regulation because it means the government eventually will take away guns. Is that really their fear? Or do they fear having to make concessions – giving up semi-automatic weapons with large ammunition magazines, for example. 

            The NRA leaders' answers to gun safety regulations sound like the reasons Laurie gives Bart when he asks her why she killed people: “Because I had to,” Laurie said. “Because I was afraid. Because they would have killed you. Because you're the only thing I've got in the whole world. Because I love you.”

            Whether or not you agree with this analysis, you should see the movie. It’s good filmmaking.

When our best is not enough

In 1947, after spearheading the defeat of fascism in Europe and, among other things, preserving the system of popular elections, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill famously said in the House of Commons: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

That observation comes to mind with the recent change of heart by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican. Once an opponent of same-sex marriage, he now supports it. His decision will no doubt contribute to the eventual law of the land.

But it was a decision based not on policy or legal or legislative considerations. It was determined by self-interest – his 21-year-old son, Will, told his parents he way gay.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Portman said his son, a junior at Yale University, told he and his wife, Jane, that his sexual orientation "was not a choice, it was who he is and that he had been that way since he could remember."

The newspaper quoted the senator: "It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have – to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years.”

Portman, who as a U.S. House member backed the 1996 federal “Defense of Marriage Act” – a law now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court and intended to block same-sex marriage – said he has no plans to lead the charge in either reversing Ohio’s 2004 ban on same-sex marriage or pushing for a federal same-sex marriage law.

Yet, he’s seeing the issue in a new light because the issue hit heart and home.

Here is democracy at its worst, rife with self-interest and provincial views, which conspire to block meaningful, often needed, laws that benefit society at large.

Decisions are too often based on how an issue affects a particular legislator or elected official personally, not whether it serves the common good. Same-sex marriage is another step into including – instead of excluding – a group into American society.

A nation that is inclusive, instead of exclusive, is a nation that is stronger morally, socially and economically – the pillars of a just and a secure society.

According to the website, Freedom to Marry.org, 11states (Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) and the District of Columbia have so far legalized same-sex marriage.

Portman told the Plain Dealer in March that among the reasons he chose now – the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments later that month – to announce his change of view was “getting comfortable with my position and wanting to do this before the politics of these court decisions make it more difficult to have an honest discussion.”

Portman came about his change-of-mind in a decent, human way – the love of his child. But shouldn’t there be more of an intellectual process from a legislator whose vote affects not just his Ohio constituents but the nation?

Fairness and equal rights regardless of sexual orientation as well as race, creed and color is central to our constitutional principles and American spirit. Shouldn’t all legislators, no matter what the issue, decide to vote on what’s best for the nation at large rather than play to the ignorance of the few?
As Churchill also said, “It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.”

Brake to Kill

This week started with five people getting shot to death on Sunday and five people getting shot to death on Wednesday. Odds are, at the level of gun violence in this country today, five more will get shot to death on Saturday.

            The shootings occur a week after the United States Senate failed to pass one of the most non-restrictive gun regulations – universal background checks for gun buyers. The National Rifle Association has been blamed, and deservedly so, for blocking what 90 percent of the country believes is a measure, no matter how small, of safety against gun violence.

             Arguing against gun safety regulation is like arguing against brakes for cars – brakes only penalize slow drivers, or, as the NRA likes to argue, gun regulations only hurt the law abiding gun owner.

            Exactly.

That’s what regulations do.

Regulations make sure every law abiding one of us adheres to rules intended to make us as individuals and as a society, safe and legal. After all, every criminal with a gun was once a law abiding gun owner.

It’s not that this sort of reasoning escapes the great minds of the NRA’s leaders, it doesn’t. They just choose to ignore it.

Unfortunately, they ignore it at the peril of everyone else, even their own.

Can you imagine the auto industry arguing against brakes? Even while people are killed in car crashes that could be avoided but for the installation of brakes. Can you imagine Congress refusing to pass legislation requiring brakes because of the proverbial “slippery slope?”

First brakes, then seat belts and the next thing you know the government will tell us to put our children in car seats!

            Of course the auto industry would never have gotten off the ground without brakes on cars. Who would buy their products? They would be too dangerous to drive.

             Yet, guns are far more dangerous than automobiles and gun manufactures appear unconcerned about declines in profit. But that’s the beauty of gun violence. The more the violence ratchets up, the more the NRA calls for more people to have guns, and the more people think they need a gun.

             If I was a conspiracy nut I’d think the NRA and gun manufacturers are creating the violence to keep the membership dues and profits rolling in.

             But I’m not. I’m just a frustrated American who doesn’t understand why we need so many unregulated guns in this country.

              

 

 

A song: Pandemic (From the Noir Collection)

Paulie’s Got Plague

I’m tellin’ you Red

Paulie’s Got Plague

And he’s making it spread

 

City’s facin’ a pyre

With Paulie runin’ ‘round like lose ‘lectrical wire

Officials want calm; not panic in the street

Ignore press inquiries while making their sweep

 

If you don’t know Paulie’s he’s short and swarthy

Red’s his gal, she’s tall and curvy

Meet either one and they’re feverishly sweaty

Don’t hesitate to fire when ready

 

Paulie’s demise was on a rented bed

That’s were we found him, that’s what we said

So come on out, if you’re in there Red

We need to shoot you – shoot you dead

It’s the only way to stop the dread

 

Oh, where are you Red?

Didn’t you hear what we said?

You got the Plague and Paulie is dead

You got the Plague and Paulie is dead

 

Funeral for a Friend

           When it comes to funerals, there are not too many I really want to attend.  It’s not that the solemn ceremony depresses or saddens me; I like to believe wherever the deceased has departed is a better place.  It’s just that funerals are too anti-climatic.

Roy, though, was a friend whose funeral I felt compelled to attend, in part to comfort his wife, Wanda. But I also felt a connection with him; he was comfortable to be around.  No matter how I was feeling before having a conversation with him, after our conversation I always felt good about things.

                He was an unassuming man, yet Roy offered so much and touched so many that no one other than those who knew him would understand. His greatest capacity, perhaps his gift, was to listen, and have patience for those, like myself sometimes, who were too busy talking rather than listening.

                To hear Roy discuss politics, religion or social issues was to realize, even marvel, that this simple man – he was a barber by trade – had a scholarly depth; a self-made man. He was a studious observer of the human condition; he could see life’s hypocrisies and ironies and laugh.

                He also could see the good and bad in people, accept all their human failings and talents, yet not judge them. He was a warm man who seemed to always have a smile for people.

                Roy’s compassion knew no bounds. He was not discouraged by the state of society or the world at large. He was a devout Christian, never wavered in his optimism. Church was critical in his life. That is where I met him.

                When the doctors told him he had terminal cancer, only mere months before he would die, Roy remained joyful and hopeful. He was leaving this world, but had faith that he was going to a better one.

He was selfless, a pillar of strength for Wanda, who herself had battled cancer. He wanted to make sure she was happy when he was gone, suggesting to her one day a few weeks before his death that she begin now to find a companion.

                She protested, of course, it wasn’t even in her thought process. He was her love. She would be with him forever, though she knew what he was offering and loved him all the more for it.

                As he was dying, becoming weaker by the day, he helped his wife, who struggled often alone to care for him, with his funeral arrangements – a brief entombment service at the cemetery immediately following his death and the next day a service to celebrate his life at their church.

He wanted nothing elaborate or long, but enough for remembrance and to offer comfort to his wife and family and friends. He ensured there was money for a luncheon after his service, including ice cream for dessert. Roy loved ice cream.

                 The entombment service for Roy, in a small chapel in the cemetery, was brief. His pastor spoke a few words, sublime yet appropriate. As I sat and listened, I knew I was going to miss Roy. Attending his funeral was perhaps about keeping that connection to him.

                We meet so few remarkable people in our lives (or maybe we don’t spend enough time seeing how remarkable the people we do know are), but those we know, we want to stay connected to, even after they’ve gone.