How lacking we are in a legitimate comprehension of our very own history

Major ideologue shift from "Honest" Abe … 

It is an argument I often hear from ideologues about how the Democratic Party (although they usually leave off the “ic” out of a lame attempt to diminish the Dems image) is the one that gave us segregation and bigotry.

The ones who argue that the Republican Party is the so-called “Party of Lincoln” that freed the slaves and is the one that has done far more for black people than the open hostility they have received from Democratic politicos.

… to "Fake News" Donald

BUT IT IS one I heard again Tuesday from someone who felt compelled to turn to Facebook to say that that, “a vote for a Democrat is a vote for the party that fought a war to keep my ancestors enslaved.”

That same African-American individual also felt compelled to write, “even an illiterate, newly-freed slave knew not to vote for a Democrat.”

Writing as one who just over a week ago went to an early voting center in Cook County and cast a ballot that deliberately went against every single Republican option as a way of undermining President Donald Trump’s influence for the next two years, I’d have to retort that some people truly are dangerous in the way they try to use historic allusions to defend nonsensical historic claims.

Figures such as FDR, along with … 

Yet this woman’s Facebook ramblings are not unique. I’m sure I will hear similar nonsense-thoughts expressed again even after “Election ‘18” is long over-and-done with.

NOW I’M NOT about to deny that the original Republican Party that our state’s very own “Honest Abe” was a part of was eager to maintain the “union” of our nation, and was the opposition to the segregationists who were more than willing to engage in war to preserve the “Southern Way of life” that included chattel slavery.

… JFK and LBJ (below) influenced Dems shift … 

After our nation’s (very un-)Civil War, it was the structure of the Democratic Party that elected government officials who tried to evade the spirit of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th amendments to the Constitution that essentially granted equality to all regardless of race by giving us the policies of “Jim Crow” throughout the South.

… away from segregation ways, … 

But anybody who thinks that’s the extent of the story is spewing nonsense more fake than anything Donald Trump has tried to proclaim as truth.

The reality is that the political parties began to shift back in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president – who expressed some support for more progressive ideals and made them a part of the Democratic platform. Although one could honestly say FDR’s support for such ideals were more the doing of first lady Eleanor who got him to do things he might not otherwise have bothered with.

THEN CAME THE Civil Rights years of the 1950s-60s, which John F. Kennedy gave lip service to, but became reality with Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964.

… so naturally, Trump admires Jackson

That act passed with an off-beat combination of Democrats and just enough Republicans who didn’t oppose integrationist ideals to overcome those political people who seriously thought there was truth to the slogan, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow, and Segregation forever!”

As for those who thought there was legitimacy to the “old ways,” they were the ones who made the shift from the Democrats to the Republicans, led largely by the influence of Richard Nixon and later by Ronald Reagan who made the "seggies" feel welcome to the point where their grandchildren now run the GOP and make it quite less grand every time Trump opens his mouth.

Which means those people who try to claim that Democrats are the party of segregation and the old horrid ways are ignoring the massive transformation that occurred in our political structure.

NIXON: Won on a 'Southern' strategy

WHAT MAKES IT more ridiculous is when those same people try to argue that the reason the Democrats no longer represent what they view as “real” people is because of this shift. As though Dems gave up public interests to focus on these racial issues.

I also find it odd that Trump himself has often tried to claim a bipartisan nature of his own political ideology by claiming support and admiration for the presidency of Andrew Jackson. That early 19^th Century figure who was one of the first Democrats to be elected president and who often was backed by those who saw a sense of legitimacy to the old segregationist ways of our society.

Personally, I think people are entitled to vote how they want to. I comprehend that some black voters find a sense of hypocrisy in backing Democrats who seem more concerned with their own self-interests than anything involving the electorate.

So if this woman doesn’t want to vote for Democrats, that’s her business. Just realize that I (and just about anybody who’s ever read a history book of any type) are going to disregard her thoughts as the nonsense-ramblings of an ideologue – which actually is what she has in common with our incumbent president.

  -30-

J.E.B. who? It’s now going to be Obama Elementary in Richmond

It’s not new, or particularly newsworthy, that yet another school somewhere in the country has chosen to name itself after the nation’s 44^th president. Heck, there are some 44 schools that already bear the moniker of Barack Obama.

OBAMA: Now has a Richmond school in memory

Yet most of those were new school buildings erected in recent years, and often in places where the locals never would have put the name symbolizing the Confederacy of old on a public structure.

WHICH IS WHAT makes the newly-named Barack Obama Elementary School in Richmond, Va. – named for our very own community organizer-turned-U.S. president, all the more unique.

For until now, the school had bore the name of J.E.B. Stuart – who didn’t even live to see the end of the Civil War, but during the conflict between the states was regarded by southern interests as a skilled horseman and cavalry officer and one of the supreme military officials of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Of course, to everybody else, J.E.B. was just some ol’ white guy who once had the nerve to take up arms against the United States. An act of treason, if you want to be literal about it.

All because he wanted to reinforce the “way of life” that the South always proclaimed – the one that kept non-white people in a status of second-class citizenship. As in the South wanted them counted in the population to boost their total but wasn’t about to give them the same rights of white people.

BUT THERE WERE those who subscribed to the theory of “the lost cause” when thinking of the Civil War who were determined to pay tribute to every possible Confederate figure to try to glorify why they fought against the United States.

So the idea that J.E.B. Stuart could get a school named for him? Have generations of children thinking of him as a figure worthy of respect? I’m sure some would argue it no more ridiculous that I went to elementary schools in the Chicago area named for generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But times truly are changing. No matter how much some want to think this Age of Trump offers credibility to their cause, it seems the day will come when we can dump the Confederacy glorification.

STUART: Now just a figure of the past

We now pay tribute at this Richmond school to the first non-white man to become U.S. president – a concept that I’m sure infuriates the Confederacy-backers and probably has them backing Donald Trump’s actions in large part because they seem determined to erase the memory of Obama’s presidential actions.

BUT MAYBE IT’S just the evidence that the Obama legacy just can’t be erased – and that the Trump presidential legacy ultimately is determined to be his failure to undo the actions of recent decades. No matter how much he tries.

Personally, I find the idea that a Richmond high school is making such a gesture. For that Virginia city once served as the capital during those four years the Confederate states tried declaring themselves to be an independent nation.

Now, of course, Richmond is nothing more than a state capital for Virginia – no more important on the national political scene than Springfield, Ill. Our very own state capital city that gave us the figure of Abraham Lincoln.

Who lives on bigger than any of those grey-clad Confederates who touted the concept of ‘states rights’ not so much because they wanted separate nation-states but because they didn’t want anybody else interfering with their ability to back certain acts of immorality with the rule of law.

TO THE PEOPLE who still, to this day, try to justify the Confederacy, I’m sure the idea of an Obama School in Richmond is the equivalent of phlegm being hocked into their collective face.

Do we need more Lincoln Schools in South

But to the vast majority of us, it’s a sign that we’re finally, long-overdue, ready to move on from the mess that bogged down our nation some 150-plus years ago, and which some continued to tried to fight for during the following century-and-a-half.

Besides, just think of the mental chaos to be created for future generations who try to justify Confederate rhetoric while explaining the existence of Obama School.

While the memory of James Ewell Brown Stuart fades further into the past. Seriously, with all those names, it’s no wonder people just called him “Jeb.”

  -30-

It’s Cinco de Mayo; What’s your point?

I don’t live these days in a Spanish-speaking enclave of any sort, yet I could – if I wished – take part Saturday in a neighborhood Cinco de Mayo party.

How many people think this is cute?

It was just the other day that one of my neighbors had their young daughter go door-to-door around the neighborhood, handing out invitations to the party they’re planning to have Saturday afternoon into early evening.

THE WHOLE BLOCK, it seems, is invited to share in a joint celebration featuring Mexican-themed food and drink, along with some music.

Did I say this isn’t a Spanish-speaking neighborhood? I may well be the lone Latino living on the block. Do I think this means my neighbors have some particular sensitivity to ethnicity and culture and history?

I sincerely doubt it.

I wouldn’t be the least bit shocked if the fact that Saturday has some sort of holiday attached to it is merely a chance for them to party – and perhaps they think it will be a novelty to offer up margaritas; along with food items that will make the servings at a standard-issue Taco Bell franchise seem to have a touch of authenticity.

WHICH IS WHY I doubt I’ll be out amongst my neighbors – that, and I do have a touch of anti-social behavior in me. If I did go out there, I’d probably be the crackpot who’d want to turn the whole thing into a history lesson.

And I don’t doubt in the least that many of the people who will be doing something to mark Saturday, the Fifth of May, probably have no clue (or any interest in learning) the significance of the date in Mexican history.

What it is is the 156^th anniversary of the date that a Mexican resistance group attacked a military garrison in Pueblo (a city located near the capital of Mexico City) and actually managed to drive the troops from the city.

Maximilian I, the Austrian puppet for France who tried ruling over Mexico

This was during the time when France (which regretted the Louisiana Purchase that sold off its North American colonies to the United States) wanted to re-establish a military presence in the Americas.

WHICH LED THE French to think they could confiscate Mexico (which had declared its independence from Spain in 1810 – Independence Day is Sept. 16) and claim it for themselves.

Cinco de Mayo pays tribute to those Mexicans who were willing to stand up for the idea of their home nation as independent and were able to beat what was back then one of the world’s great military powers.

Those modern-day cynics eager to berate Mexico for any reason they can conjure will point out that the French eventually retook their garrison, and that the conflict between the French-backed Mexican emperor (Maximillian of Austria, a French puppet) and the Mexican people lingered on into a stalemate for several years.

But in the way the United States and Mexico intertwine, the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 resulted in military aid to the Mexican resistance – which resulted two years later in France giving up its colonial dreams and pulling out their military. The end result was Maximillian being put before a firing squad on June 19, 1867.

U.S. OFFICIALS felt compelled to back Mexicans because the official Mexico government of Maximillian was a Confederate-supporting one – and one that likely would have sent the French military across the Rio Grande into the so-called Confederacy to fight for the cause of splitting the country they helped create some 80 years earlier.

Mexicans enjoy beisbol too

Not that I expect many people today to have any knowledge, or interest, of these events. All too many think Cinco de Mayo is the equivalent of Fourth of July and are more interested in where they can find the cheapest margarita or burrito deal.

Personally, I’d think more highly of them if they followed my lead – taking time out to watch this weekend’s series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.

Which is being billed informally as the “Mexico Series” because the regular season games are being played at the home ballpark of the Monterey Sultans of the Mexican League.

  -30-

A fitting result for would-be Confederate memorial on South Side

The national stink over removing all those statues erected across the South to pay tribute to the leaders of the one-time Confederate States is taking on a unique Chicago angle.

They rest in a changed neighborhood and under a U.S. flag. How appropriate for old Confederates

I’m talking about the statue that exists at the Oak Woods Cemetery in the Grand Crossing neighborhood. It marks the spot known as Confederate Mound, which actually is a mass grave for thousands of prisoners of war during the Civil War who were shipped to Chicago, held here and wound up dying here without ever seeing their native South again.

MANY OF US probably don’t realize that the one-time Camp Douglas in Chicago wound up being a prison camp for those southern sympathizers whom U.S. interests wanted held in as remote a place from the actual fighting of the Civil War as possible.

That, and the fact there were business interests based in Chicago that sold the goods to the U.S. military that kept the war going, are the local connections to that long-ago conflict over secession that some of us seem determined to want to revive.

Because those men died here, their remains wound up being buried here. They were denied what they most likely would have desired – a return trip home.

It’s not like we have individual graves paying tribute to those men who were willing to fight for the concept of splitting the United States in two – even though many of them probably had no personal interest in such a concept.

WHICH IS WHY I personally don’t get too worked up over this memorial. It’s a grave marker – as opposed to the statues paying tribute to Lee, Davis, Longstreet or any of the others who had leadership roles in the attempt at creating a new nation based on the concept of white supremacy.

Which is why certain people of today are more than eager to refight its battles – they likely do carry a distorted view of what the Confederacy was and think it somehow legitimizes their own racial nonsense.

Another Oak Woods resident who in life shot down the racial ideals the Confederates held

Which also is why Trump is providing aid and comfort to that twisted element of our society when he talks about "the beautiful statues" that are being removed.

But let’s be honest – the Confederate attempt at creating a constitution bore some similarities to what the United States had at the time. But it included provisions ensuring the continued existence of slavery based on race.

THERE WERE THOSE men who gave their lives maybe because they thought they were fighting to protect their homes. But also because their leaders were protecting their rights to keep other humans enslaved for physical labor.

It may have been an economic issue. But not really.

So for those men who died in prison camp conditions, many due to small pox and cholera, their time in life was miserable enough. But I wonder if their “eternal rest” is something that would disgust them even more.

Because the Grand Crossing neighborhood, like much of the rest of Chicago’s South Side, has undergone a significant change in composition. It’s majority African-American, and most people living there now don’t have a clue that white people ever used to call their homes home. Which creates the oddity of a Confederate grave in a black neighborhood.

AND IN A cemetery that contains, amongst others, the remains of one-time Mayor Washington, Olympic athlete Jesse Owens and Ida B. Wells, who during life campaigned against the practice of lynching.

A front page worth framing?!?

In fact, Oak Woods has become known as a cemetery where many African-American people wish to be buried. If there is an after-life, I’m wondering if those wretched old souls are complaining about the “neighbors” their earthly remains now have.

So as far as whether the grave market depicting a southern infantry soldier with crossed arms ought to be removed, I question whether it’s worth the hassle. Having that marker where it is serves as a reminder of just how out-of-place the whole Confederate cause truly is in our society.

Considering how repulsive that cause and what it truly stood for was, maybe it’s all the more appropriate.

  -30-

How little were people paying attention back in high school history class?

I was a student of history while in college; my Bachelor of Arts degree is with an emphasis on U.S. foreign policy and much of the reading I have done during the three decades since I last was a tuition-paying student is of history and biography.
 

What would U.Penn history profs say of Trump vacuousness

I feel like I spent four years of college taking courses in subjects that interested me, and that I have continued to learn on my own. I probably will keep doing so until the day I drop dead – and someone’s going to have a heck of a time weeding through the personal library I’ve accumulated throughout the years.

I REALIZE I am the exception. Many people haven’t taken the time to study history any farther than they did during that mandatory U.S. history course they took in high school – where I remember one of my old classmates saying history would be okay if we could study cool stuff, like the 1960s.

They only remember a few generic concepts, and probably forgot most of the details. Which is something I’m sure that President Donald J. Trump counts on every time he opens his mouth.

I don’t think the one-time economics student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business deliberately lies about historic facts whenever he tries to use them to emphasize his politically partisan spin on issues.

I think it’s more likely that Trump truly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and would be much less likely to embarrass himself if he didn’t try to make historic allusions.

BECAUSE THEY’RE THE kind of thing that can come back to haunt you, even though he tries to dismiss those who catch him as being smart-aleck, know-it-alls, and who really cares what they think?!?

Trump, most recently, stirred up a mess when he talked about how former President Andrew Jackson could have averted the nation feeling the need to split and go to war with itself.

Not taking into account how Jackson was dead before the Civil War began in 1861.

 

Would Jackson think Trump a part of the problem?

Jackson used to be a favorite image of Democrats for his rhetoric about the “common man,” and the need to fight against a “corrupt aristocracy.” But he also was a slaveholder, and any serious look at how the man would have come down on the issue of Civil War, slavery and abolitionism would conclude that a “President Jackson” would have wanted to preserve the “peculiar institution” at all costs.

I DOUBT THAT Trump is seriously supporting the idea of slavery. I just think he hasn’t thought it through before shooting his mouth off.

Besides, I can’t help but think that Jackson would have viewed people with the wealth of Trump as being the “corrupt aristocracy” that IS THE PROBLEM our society faces.

Maybe a Jackson-like political person would be leading the fight to allow us all to see the Trump income tax returns so that we can all see for ourselves just how financially UNLIKE all of us The Donald truly is?

I think a lot of Trump’s problem is that he probably wasn’t paying much attention as a prep school student during history class when they talked about the Civil War’s causes,

ALTHOUGH PERSONALLY I think that the simplest explanation I ever heard of that war’s cause came from Shelby Foote, the Greenville, Miss.-native who wrote a three-volume series of books about the war and also was a prominent face in that now 27-year-old documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns.

 

I wonder if GOPers now ashamed of Lincoln

Foote, on video, said that one of the great strengths of U.S. democracy is our ability to reach compromise on just about any issue. But that in the case of slavery, we failed – which led to bloodshed.

Which is a fact I keep in mind whenever the modern-day partisan rhetoric is boosted up a notch or two – things could be worse. We don’t have Southern good ol’ boys taking up arms against the United States and all it stands for.

Even though I’m sure many of them were amongst the 46 percent of voters who last year created the Electoral College majority that put Trump into the Oval Office and gets more and more riled up every time the man misspeaks with historic fact.

  -30-

PAWAR: Visiting all 102 counties w/ 'New Deal'

EDITOR'S NOTE: Illinois gubernatorial hopeful Ameya Pawar likes to make references to the "New Deal," the grand plan by which former President Franklin D. Roosevelt got the United States out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although his references are usually vague enough that he doesn't make factual errors that would harm his campaign's slim chances of achieving victory.

Rauner comes off like would-be segregationists still fighting Civil War

That civil war is long over

Denial!

That’s the mind-set these days of Gov. Bruce Rauner, who went about giving his support on Monday to a measure meant to ensure that public colleges across the state will continue to operate at least for the rest of the current academic year.

THE STATE’S LACK of a budget has been particularly harsh on public education. They’re not getting the levels of state funding upon which they rely for operations. They’re actually having to rely upon the tuition paid by their students – which isn’t enough to keep classes open in full.

At Chicago State University, a school that traditionally is a little more messed up financially than other schools, there was actually fear that there wouldn’t be enough money to finish the current academic year.

The school might have to close down and students would find their academic work for the year all a waste.

Other schools might have to start cutting certain programs, leaving students out in the cold.

BUT THE GENERAL Assembly, that body whom Rauner thinks deserves all the blame for the state’s financial situation because they’re Democrats unwilling to see organized labor as “the enemy” like he does, last week gave its support to a measure that comes up with some $600 million to allow public higher education to keep going in full at least through September.

 

This 'civil war' ...

That’s the beginning of the 2016-17 academic year, which theoretically the state Legislature and the governor are working on already. Except they still haven’t figured out 2015-16 for real!

Now why would Rauner be so willing to make this move, which he said in a statement on Monday would, “represent a first step toward compromise between Democrats and Republicans” toward putting together the overall budget that would keep state government operating in its entirely.

Probably for the same reason that Rauner, as his one budgetary action last year, enabled elementary education programs to have a budget.

 

... should also end

FOR THE PUBLIC grammar schools and high schools are the one entity that have received their state funding during the state fiscal year that began back on July 1.

Try denying a child the chance to be in the classroom supposedly learning something, and you’d see how quickly that child’s parents would turn on Rauner and wind up voting en masse for anybody with the nerve to run against him.

Now that college students, whose financial aid was threatened by the lack of state Monetary Award Program grants, could wind up losing the chance to be able to attend classes and try to make something of their future lives (seriously, how many people can actually afford the modern-day cost of college without some financial aid?), we’d see how quickly they’d become motivated to register to vote and become a force that supports something other than the sweet-sounding-but-impractical rhetoric of presidential dreamer Bernie Sanders.

Rauner, in his Monday statement, talks of the need to build upon bi-partisan political rhetoric. As though he thinks he is making the initial gesture to a hostile pro-union political force more interested in looking out for organized labor interests than those of the people.

WHICH SOUNDS A bit as ridiculous to me as those people who like to pretend the U.S. Civil War was truly a conflict over state’s rights with civil rights issues being completely irrelevant to the struggle.

Would Abe be ashamed of Ill. today?

I’m not even getting into the fact that the issues upon which certain people tried to rely upon the concept of state’s rights to defend were despicable and immoral. It just seems like Rauner is determined to view our financial situation through as narrow a lens as the Confederacy-apologists try to view that century-and-a-half old war.

Although it’s likely purely coincidental that it means Rauner is fighting against “union” the same way those Southerners were. That war is over, and the fight for a state budget ought to be.

It’s time for the sides to come together and compile the budget agreement that keeps government going. After that, Rauner can resume his organized labor fight – perhaps gaining enough Legislature support after the next elections to have a chance of legitimately reducing labor union influence.

  -30-

Will dumping the Confederate battle flag really change anybody’s attitude?

What should we think of the fact that many people are stepping up the rhetoric these days following the shooting deaths of nine black people at a Charleston, S.C., church to dump the old Confederate battle flag?

For only $59 (plus $6.95 shipping), you can pretend to honor the South

There long have been those who argue the Southern cross flag of the Confederate armies is merely about “heritage,” the notion of a flag that depicts pride amongst those who grew up in that part of the region that once tried to break itself away from the United States.

BUT IT WAS pointed out that when South Carolina state officials last week had the flags at the Statehouse lowered to half-mast out of respect for the dead, the battle flag flying over a nearby Confederate soldier memorial still flew high and proud!

I have heard the official explanation that the flag was incapable of being lowered without someone physically climbing to the top of the flag pole and removing it by hand.

But I really wouldn’t have cared if a battle flag had also been lowered to half-mast. Its very presence some 150 years after the attempt at creating a new nation based on using state’s rights to justify slavery and segregation is what is offensive.

Which is why there are those who are hoping that South Carolina state Rep. Norman “Doug” Brannon, R-Spartanburg, is successful with his rhetoric that he will push for changes in state law to remove the battle flag from having a presence in the state that thinks it’s a point of pride that it provoked the Civil War.

NOT THAT I think it matters much. The kind of people with the racial hang-ups so intense that they’re willing to take up arms are going to keep that symbol no matter what anyone else says.
 

Take Dylann Roof, the barely-a-man who last week went into that black-oriented church and decided to kill a few people – but not all because he wanted witnesses as to his act of what he thinks is manliness (even though I wonder if that girlish haircut of his will make him a prime target in prison).

His Internet-published manifesto that has since been deleted included the photographs of himself waving Confederate battle flags and wearing a jacket depicting emblems of the apartheid-era South Africa and its neighboring nation of Rhodesia  (both of which tried to exist as white-only nations with European roots in portions of the planet where native Africans ought to have been the majority).

Now known as Zimbabwe to those of us who live in the real world.

Do you really want to see someone wear this?

THEN AGAIN, PEOPLE like Roof don’t live in our world. They live in their own world, and think the rest of us ought to have to live there with them. In a legally-mandated subservient position, of course.

So it really doesn’t matter if the symbols get banned. The crackpots amongst us will still feel the same way. Their real punishment is that they’re forced to live in our world – where they amount to a batch of nobodies.

Heck, the swastika of Nazi-era Germany has been an illegal symbol in Deutschland since the end of World War II, yet those Germans who still fantasize about the resurrection of the “Third Reich” are able to get them symbols – usually made right here in the U.S.A.

Insofar as Confederate symbols, we have generations of southerners who were taught a take on the Civil War (the War for Southern Independence, the Second American Revolution, the War Against Northern Aggression, to name a few) that totally justifies the idea that continued use of the battle flag has nothing to do with showing hostility toward the idea of black people being people just like anybody else.

THAT’S NOT GOING to go away any time soon. Knuckleheads will be knuckleheads, no matter what!

If anything, we need a better education process so that people realize what the Southern Cross truly stands for. Because it will only be when people recognize for themselves how tacky a symbol it is that people will relegate it to the dustbin of history.

And how President Barack Obama’s suggestion of retiring the battle flag to a museum (just like the Smithsonian Institute has Ku Klux Klan robes on display as physical evidence of this nation’s racist past) could someday become a reality.

  -30-
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: My own experience with the Confederate battle flag was spending one year attending a high school where the sports teams were “the Rebels” and the flag flew over the school’s football field – along with being painted onto the basketball court. I remember thinking of it as being a silly symbol; one that has since been retired. Of course, I later transferred to a high school where the symbol was a generic Indian chief (think the University of Illinois’ Chief Illiniwek without the pretentious talk of it being an “honored symbol”). I wonder at times which symbol was more ridiculous.

150 years since Lincoln became immortal; what would he be today?

Anybody who hangs around political people gets used to certain catchphrases and concepts being tossed out when one wants to score political points.

One such idea I have often heard expressed is the notion that, if he were alive now, Abraham Lincoln certainly would not be a Republican. I can’t keep track of the number of Democrats who have suggested that a modern-day Lincoln would have converted to their political party.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN skeptical of the suggestion. Not so much because I think Republican partisans of the modern-day are somehow correct in their way of thinking about the biggest-name politico Illinois has ever produced.

It’s just that I think Lincoln himself might have become so repulsed by some of the actions committed GOP of the 21^st Century that if he had left, it would be to create yet another political party.

Perhaps someone like H. Ross Perot, goofy ears and all, is the modern-day equivalent of Lincoln. Not that I’m implying the Texas billionaire who actually gained a significant number of votes when he tried running for president in 1992 has much in common with Lincoln.

But perhaps I just think Lincoln would be ornery and independent enough to find all of the current political structure somewhat repugnant!

LET’S NOT FORGET that during his lifetime, Lincoln was affiliated primarily with the Whig Party. When the potential for slavery to spread into the territories we now think of as the Plains states split the Whigs into factions, Lincoln wound up eventually going with the one that opposed slavery.

Which wound up becoming the Republican Party, and Lincoln became their first presidential candidate who managed to win the election.

I do believe that the extent to which the old Southern agenda of “state’s rights” being used to justify repulsive racial policies and other means of imposing on the civil rights of certain people who don’t fit their image of who belongs in this country would have bothered Lincoln.

But I wonder if Lincoln would see the modern-day Democratic Party as being a bit dysfunctional in its own right – so many factions that have trouble uniting that the Republicans in their ideological rigidity are still capable of winning elections.

OF COURSE, THE reason we pay so much attention to Lincoln’s memory is because of the events of 150 years ago Tuesday. Just days after the first military surrender that essentially ended the Civil War (even though fighting continued in spurts for two more months), Lincoln was shot. Under circumstances that ensure his critics in life were permanently disgraced.

Lincoln died early the next morning, laid out in a bed so small that he had to be put on it on an angle. And yes, generations of Chicago schoolchildren have gone on field trips to the Chicago Historical Society museum to see that bed (along with the charred crackers that survived the Chicago Fire of 1871).

In fact, a part of me would be inclined to go to the museum Tuesday to see the bed, except that it is on loan for the year to the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. That’s a bit much of a drive for me to make on a whim.

So perhaps we should spend part of the day pondering Lincoln’s memory, which gets distorted in so many ways by people eager to simplify his story – particularly those too eager to engage in Confederate historic revisionism.

LINCOLN MAY NOT have been the pure abolitionist who was willing to do away with slavery of black people for the common good. Although his critics of the day were certainly willing to see him that way to benefit their own hostile thoughts.

Just last week, the Washington Post published a commentary suggesting that, “Today’s GOP is the party of Jefferson Davis, not of Lincoln.”

That might be a bit simplistic a thought, but there is a certain amount of truth to it – in that I wonder if modern-day Republicans find a bit of shame in the fact that their political party historically was known as the “Party of Lincoln.”

Wishing instead they could regard Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon of the “Southern Strategy” and Ronald Reagan (who throughout the years chased off those Republicans who were motivated by Lincoln’s ideals) as their true founders.

  -30-

150 years and counting; what have we learned from Civil War tales?

It may wind up being the most over-quoted statement in coming days, but the view of a Confederate commander upon his surrender at Appomattox in Virginia is a thought that continues to have relevance.

Attributed at times to Henry Wise (and at others to an unknown Confederate soldier), it was the thought that there exists a serious split in the view of North and South – one that will never truly wither away.

“YOU MAY FORGIVE us, but we won’t be forgiven. There is a rancor in our hearts which you little dream of. We hate you, Sir,” was supposedly said to U.S. general Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain when he oversaw ceremonies in which those Rebel soldiers laid down their arms before going home.

Do we fully appreciate the “rancor in our hearts” that was expressed at the ceremonies held in the days following the actual surrender document signed by General Robert E. Lee some 150 years ago Thursday?

It comes across from political operatives in an almost joking sense every time we see the maps that show blue and red states, with the “red” that signifies Republican victories seeming to be based heavily amongst those states that actually talked secession and tried to break away from the United States.

I remember one political operative literally saying that the opposition to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory was evidence that “they’re still fighting the Civil War” in the south.

I ALWAYS FIND it a little absurd to use Civil War analogies in such cases because one has to admit the significance of that military conflict from 1861-65 was that the split was so severe that people felt compelled to take up arms.

Heck, the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president was the act considered to be the final straw to the “state’s rights” camp that caused them to try to break away and form their own country. The political observer in me never fails to be amazed that Lincoln could win that election even though he wasn’t even on the ballot in most of the southern states – opposition to his alleged abolitionist ways was so strong!

We may have some serious splits in our national psyche, but I don’t see anyone outside of those militia types seriously talking about taking up arms. And the bulk of us realize those people are nuts.

We’re not taking such talk seriously. Perhaps that is the lesson we learned from the Civil War – that of the need to compromise.

PART OF WHAT motivates me to write this commentary is that I recently stumbled onto a re-run of the Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” documentary on the local PBS affiliate.

The Wise quote (if he really said it) caught my ear, as did the belief of historian Shelby Foote that the Civil War was caused by the ultimate failure of the two sides to reach a compromise – something he believes is the very premise of our society’s successes.

Does that make the Civil War merely an aberration? Something that we learned our lesson from and don’t need to focus so much attention on any longer?

I’d hate to think that, because then the quote from Winston Churchill about “fail(ing) to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” comes up. As in could our social split on so many issues someday become so extreme that somebody feels compelled to dig out their firearm and start shooting at those people who disagree?

TRYING TO MAKE sure that doesn’t happen could be the real significance of the talk that will occur Thursday from all the repeat references to people that the Civil War ended (for all practical purposes, if not literally) on this date in 1865.

That I’m sure many of you will dismiss with little thought – before moving on to the latest White Sox or Cubs score. Or perhaps you’re more intrigued by the sex-change conversion of one-time Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner?

Which is why a poem such as “Unreconstructed Rebel” (performed as a song by Hoyt Axton, although some say it was written as a parody) continues to have some relevance, rather than withering away into a relic of the past.

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Does Quinn’s Juarez tribute boost him amongst Chicago’s Latino population?

It may be pure coincidence. Perhaps I’m reading way too much into this.

QUINN: Seeking Latino vote?

But I’m sure Gov. Pat Quinn doesn’t mind the way the timing worked out over his participation in a ceremony held Friday in Chicago to pay tribute to the memory of one-time Mexico President Benito Juarez.

AS IT TURNS out, Friday’s events at the Thompson Center state government building to mark the 208^th anniversary of Juarez’ birth allowed for a proclamation that said Friday was Benito Juarez Day in Illinois.

Which came one day after Quinn’s current political opponent, Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner, released his first campaign advertising spot of the general election cycle – and it’s in Spanish.

I suspect that reaching out to Latino voters is going to be a crucial part of Rauner’s attempts to unseat Quinn – and that first ad telling us en Espanol how inept Quinn has been is just the first step.

Not that I think Rauner (“Mr. .01 percent?”) really cares about the growing Latino population. But any votes he can steal from Quinn help benefit his own desires.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder how much of Friday’s activities were Quinn’s way of showing he, too, cares about the Latino segment of the electorate?

He makes a gesture to show support to Latino (actually in this case, Mexican) culture. It doesn’t win him an election all by itself.

But it does show that at least somebody on his staff had a sense of history in mind, which allows for the governor to gain the benefits of a Friday morning ceremony at the Thompson Center – where a display had been erected in recent days to pay tribute to Juarez’ memory.

Cinema's takes on Juarez ..

For those of you whose sense of history doesn’t go back any farther than the name “Ronald Reagan,” Juarez was a Mexican political leader who became president in the 1860s – a time when the United States was split in civil war and Mexico had its own mess with the French attempting to intervene by trying to reassert an American colonial presence at Mexico’s expense.

JUAREZ SPENT MUCH of his presidency in exile, but was able to maintain a movement of an independent Mexico that kept the French from establishing themselves permanently in North America, while also keeping the French from being able to offer aid and comfort to the concept of a Confederacy that would have split the United States in two.

... and Lincoln

He also had a vision of Democracy for Mexico, modeled after the United States. Which is how he got the tags, “the Abraham Lincoln of Mexico” and “Father of the Americas.”

It also is noteworthy that when Lincoln was elected president following the 1860 elections and was preparing to travel to Washington to assume the post, it was an emissary of Juarez who first met with Lincoln at his downtown Springfield home to offer congratulations.

So it’s not like there weren’t ties between Juarez and Lincoln. It becomes a matter of Quinn aides knowing their history that they were able to make the connection and stage the event that will make Quinn seem more aware.

AND THE FACT that officials from the Dominican Republic and Colombia took part expanded it beyond a merely-Mexican event, although I’m sure Quinn will now try to find ways to reach out to the Puerto Rican community (which does comprise the other third of Chicago’s Latino population).

RAUNER: Who would he honor?

It certainly is a better response by Quinn than that nonsensical (and Internet-only) ad the guv gave us Thursday that compared Rauner to “Mr. Burns” of “The Simpsons.”

Now as to Juarez’ birthday, how will Rauner retort? Is there a financier with Illinois ties whom Rauner can praise?

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