Evans’ Rag

Vol 2 Issue 24

Update Since Last Week

The statue of Jefferson Davis is no longer gesturing across Monument Avenue—toward who? The Daughters of the Confederacy are the only ones crying over that sorry waste of stone.

A Judge’s All-Courthouse Email An article in today’s Washington Post proves if lawyers can be civil, we all should be able to manage the trick. The following email quotes are proof:

“Since I am about to be interviewed, I thought it appropriate to unburden myself in opposition to the madness proposed by Senator Warren: the desecration of Confederate graves.”

“It’s important to remember that Lincoln did not fight the war to free the Slaves. Indeed he [Lincoln} was willing to put up with slavery in the South if the Confederate States Returned.” quote from Judge Silberman’s email provided in Washington Post story

Which was true at the outset of the Civil War, though Lincoln’s position evolved as he endured listening to witnesses of the deaths of 620,000 some Americans. If anything we know is true about Lincoln, he had a soul.

And the judges response coming back from a courageous law clerk:

“As people considered to be property, my ancestors would not have been involved in the philosophical and political debates about Lincoln’s true intentions, or his view on racial equality,”

“For them, and myself, race is not an abstract topic to be debated, so in my view anything that was built to represent white racial superiority, or named after someone that fought to maintain white supremacy (or the Southern economy of slavery)… should be removed from high trafficked areas of prominence and placed in museums where they can be part of lessons that put them in context.”

Derrick Petit, a law clerk in the chambers of U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.

To provide context: in addition to Elizabeth Warren’s bill’s demanding the change in military base names, an earlier version of the bill would have also prohibited Confederate markers at grave sites in military cemeteries.

To which a law clerk working with another judge replied:

“I cannot speak for Judge Silberman, but I raise this because it may have been that aspect of the bill [regarding grave sites] to which he was referring and I didn’t want there to be an unnecessary misunderstanding.”

Judge Silberman corrected his email to confirm his objection was removing the grave markers, and not the change in military base names. His reply to Derrick Petit was:

“Thank you for your thoughtful message… Judge Wilkins is absolutely correct; my concern was limited only to cemeteries.”

There’s irony in a judge not measuring his words as carefully as the law clerk. But still, the man deserves credit for understanding how American military bases—named for generals who set out to break the country—might be a bit offensive—even to present day whites who descend from Union soldiers—say, my great grandfather, James Brown.

Fort Bragg was named for a Confederate general who got his ass whipped—repeatedly—by U.S. Grant. It is one of the bases under consideration to be renamed. Besides, the current President declares “he hates losers.”

Remember 620,000 dead Americans? You bet, but it’s time to move on.