That the nation’s rebirth, in which the promises of its founding creed first began to be met in earnest, is regarded as sorrowful is a testament to the strength of the alternative history of the Lost Cause, in which the North was the aggressor and the South was motivated by the pursuit of freedom and not slavery. The persistence of this myth is in part a desire to avoid the unfathomable reality that half the country dedicated itself to the monstrous cause of human bondage. The freedom that the South fought for was the freedom to own black people as property. The states’ rights for which the South battled were the right to own slaves and the right to expand slavery.

Of course, the compromises did not end there. American reunion was preceded by the violent reimposition of white supremacy in the South, with the acquiescence of the North. The New Deal was shaped by compromises between Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats that limited many of its benefits to whites. Republicans broke with their own abolitionist history, bending to oppose civil rights in exchange for Southern votes. America compromised when it outlawed de jure segregation and sanctioned de facto segregation. Paring back the welfare state and building up the carceral state was a compromise. Offering body cameras in response to unarmed black people being gunned down by armed agents of the state with impunity is a compromise. This is a significantly abridged list; you can trace the entire history of the United States through political compromises in which black rights are the currency of exchange.

Kelly’s remarks, then, are part of an American tradition of historical denial, and he is hardly its only adherent. It is fair to ask, however, why Kelly believes that there could have been compromise over the issue of slavery, that a war over human bondage could have contained “men and women of good faith on both sides,” and that a man could have killed thousands of his countrymen and still be honorable, but that a Gold Star widow who feels disrespected by the president’s words, that a congresswoman who defended her and was slandered by Kelly himself, and that the athletes who refuse to compromise on the question of black personhood should be given no quarter.

This article originally stated that the Ken Burns documentary Civil War describes Confederate General Robert E. Lee as someone who "never owned a slave himself." That phrasing is in the companion book to the documentary, not the documentary itself. We regret the error.

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