Mr. Mandel appears to see the US Civil War in as starkly moralistic terms
as he does the Viet Nam War. Without denying in any part the horror of
black slavery, I submit that the Civil War contained other elements as
well. For instance, the Northeastern capitalists managed to split the
slave owning South from the free soil midwest so that it could colonize and
exploit both. Most of my immediate relatives came from Tennessee. I have
found their graves on both sides. I would remind us all, that history is
written by the winners, and real life is a bit more complex than simple
good and evil.
Karl Slinkard, ex-hippie, ex-soldier, ex-good ole boy, ex-freedom marcher,
ex-drunk, ex-doper, etc.
kslinkar@library.berkeley.edu
At 01:19 PM 6/17/00 PST, you wrote:
>On memorials to the Confederate dead, Langston Hughes wrote me in
>1951 with kind words about my "stirring poem" opening with a
>stanza on that subject:
> " The South alone,' my host had said
> "remembers its dishonorable dead."
> His arm swept round the ordered Square
> to mock the statues frozen there
> of generals whose armies bled
> that white might eat the black man's bread.
>Hughes card and the poem are reproduced in my Saying No To Power,
>p. 314.
> William Mandel
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