Justice for All
Feb. 7, 2021
I’ve been reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Grant. It’s kind of slow going at first, but then the Civil War happens, and it’s a real page-turner! The Civil War almost can’t help but be fascinating. It’s one of the few times in history where there’s a clear right and a clear wrong, and the good guys clearly won. It’s this moment where America stands up and says, “this is who we are, and this is what we stand for, and we won’t compromise these values.”
Alas, history is never that simple. Grant often bemoaned how split the north was, how there were always factions more keen to have peace at any cost, than to see the war through to its end. To have peace without winning the war meant the continuation of slavery, but winning the war meant a lot of bloodshed. Many in the north weren’t willing to pay such a high price for the freedom of black slaves. Luckily for us all, there were some key northern victories right before the 1864 presidential election, shoring up support for Lincoln’s re-election and ensuring the war was seen through to the end.
So the Civil War section is good and fun, but then I hit the Reconstruction Era and I get stuck. Soon after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Lincoln is assassinated. Johnson is made President, and he had neither the vision nor the temperament of Lincoln. Lincoln was firm in his convictions. Johnson was more concerned about ingratiating himself with the southern aristocracy, and wholly unconcerned about the plight of former slaves.
What followed is just confounding to me. A war was fought and won, with the central issue being whether or not the south could have slaves. So now there are a whole bunch of freedmen living amongst their former masters, and the only real government presence is the Union army. The Union gets to decide how to allow the southern states to re-enter the Union, and how they get to set up their new state governments.
It could have been a great moment of instituting justice for those who had so long been oppressed. It could have been thorough—re-distributing land, providing for education, ensuring just enforcements of laws. But it wasn’t. Such actions would have disrupted the status quo in the south, resulting in more unrest. Instead of reconstructing the south, the Union allowed them to return to the way things were. Slavery was transformed into sharecropping. Confederate armies were transformed into police units and paramilitary terror organizations (the KKK, among others). The former slaves had rights—the right to not be slaves, the right to vote—but selective enforcement of laws and acts of domestic terrorism ensured they couldn’t enjoy those rights.
I’m not done with Grant’s biography yet, but a message for us is clear—it takes great fortitude to see injustice undone. May the church always have such fortitude.
—John Coffey
