NYTimes Charles Blow Opinion

[David Lockmiller]

(09-02-2023 12:03 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Sorry David, it works fine for me.

I am now a subscriber to the Los Angeles Times - $1 for six months subscription, cancel at any time.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN is a wonderful writer:

"The sentiments and words [the initial reporter] attributed to me were not simple distortions or words taken out of context. They were thoughts I had never expressed, sentiments I had never felt and were indeed opposite to the conclusions I had reached after five years of research."

As it relates to Lincoln, she wrote:

In reply to Douglas’ charge that he favored complete “Negro equality”--a sentiment that would have meant the end of his political career--Lincoln disclaimed any intention to overturn Illinois laws that prevented blacks from voting or sitting on juries. But then, taking a position well in advance of Northern opinion at the time, he argued that the black man should be entitled “to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence” and that “in the right to eat the bread . . . which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man.”

In his last public address, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln called on his countrymen to confer the right to vote to all black men who had received an education or served in the Union Army.

In the audience that evening, a young Southerner, John Wilkes Booth, was outraged by Lincoln’s talk of citizenship for blacks. Booth vowed: “That is the last speech he will ever make.”

She wrote of her work as a historian:

"I have fought all my professional life against the tendency to label people in a derogatory way by juxtaposing their statements from the past against modern sentiments."

I think the destruction and removal of statues is an unfortunate circumstance. What better way of beginning a truthful discussion of American history at the time of the Civil War? The numbers of men on both sides killed is estimated to be 625,000. How many soldiers were permanently injured in some manner for the rest of their lives? And, of what harm to their families? Soldiers on both sides fought for a belief.

The Grant bust and monument has not been replaced in Golden Gate Park. Someone regularly puts nail polish (or something like it) on the Lincoln statue in front of the San Francisco City Hall (cleaned regularly). And, how many people, in San Francisco and elsewhere, believe and know the entire truth regarding the "Dakota 38"?