I've been having a lot of trouble as I revise the Wilkes County chapter where admirable first cousins of each other (and of me, a few times removed) were vilified and threatened. I understand being lied about all too well, having been lied about in the New York TIMES by the dean of Yale College, Richard Brodhead, and in the NEW REPUBLIC by Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia (who said I invented lost books and then published his own derivative biography in which he mentioned these lost books as facts). My problem is that almost everyone had attitudes toward race which Democrats now would be comfortable with but did not have exactly the views that all snowflakes would be comfortable with. You could be pro-Union in the Confederacy and worship side by side with other people's slaves in church yet not be concerned with abolishing slavery because slavery was not an issue where there were so few slaves. The recurring fact is selective obliviousness, except that it is not actively, consciously selected.
Really, no one can be as enlightened as you, right?
It's disturbing to see us all in my portrayal of 1840s-1860s.
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