One of the cultural perceptions in which we are mired in the 21st century is that we are superior to those who have gone before. That comes across in your opinion column in the March 5 issue [“Politics as usual?”]. You have 150 years of historical knowledge not available to the 1862 editor of the Herald. Who knows? In 1862 you might have written a similar column.
You criticize the 1862 editor for not seeing the longer view and the greater good. That is unjustified, since nobody can do that. If Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis could have foreseen the human and property destruction of the April 1861-April 1865 war, they might have been able to work out a compromise. They thought the war would be over in 90 days, the length of time that volunteers signed up for. I believe that my great-great uncle who was killed in the war, another one who was wounded, and a great-grandfather who spent a year as a prisoner of war might well have supported a compromise.
Ludwig von Mises wrote that nobody can predict what’s going to happen 30 seconds ahead. The bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reinforce that idea.
Historian Gary Gallagher says that we need to read history forward and not backward. That may enable us to understand why people did what they did at the time. What they did may not be justifiable when viewed through today’s lens, but it may be explainable.
In May 1954 I was a student at the Navy Supply Corps School in Athens Ga. In our public speaking class, Clay Rose of Tennessee and I were chosen to speak against Brown v. Board of Education. Having gone to segregated public schools in Richmond and never having traveled much outside the Commonwealth of Virginia, I defended the society in which I had grown up. The knowledge acquired in the years that followed showed me that I was mistaken.
In the early 1970s, when Judge Merhige ordered that the school systems of Richmond, Henrico and Chesterfield be combined with children bused all over everywhere, I complained to a black co-worker Brad Morton that there wasn’t a thing I could do about the man issuing that decree. He gave me his best smile and said, “Walter, now you know how the black man has felt for 350 years.” I responded, “Brad, nobody ever explained it to me that clearly before.”
Despite the above, I do appreciate your informative and interesting columns, particularly those involving your aunt.
— Walter Dunn Tucker, Richmond, Va.