Now for a parting quotation from this precious article of Harvard’s professional historian:
“Good people (in the South) rarely make much distinction between the man who is guilty and the man who looks like a criminal; between shooting him down in the street or burning him at the stake; between burning the guilty man or his innocent wife; between the quiet family inferno with only two or three hundred spectators and a first-class, advertised auto-da-fé with special trains, and the children of the public schools in the foreground.”
There you have it, in all its true amplitude and animus!
“The good people” of the South do not strive, according to Dr. Hart, to draw the line of distinction between the man who is guilty and the man who simply looks guilty. They establish no real distinction between the guilty man and his innocent wife. It makes no difference to these “good people” whether they have a quiet family inferno, with two or three hundred spectators, or the first-class, advertised burning, when special trains are run and the public-school teachers give the children a recess in order that they may attend the exhibition!
If that is not mere partisanship, frothing at the mouth, what is it?
It certainly cannot be seriously taken as a truthful summing up of a general situation.
An irresponsible stump-speaker, in the reckless rush of a hot political campaign, would have better sense than to deal in hyperbole in that furious fashion.
But when a man of Dr. Hart’s standing publishes stuff like this it does harm. It misleads the North and arouses passionate indignation in the South.
When Dr. Hart does work of that wild sort he is no longer a historian; he is simply an incendiary. He is a child playing with fire.
If I were to apply to the North the same measure which Professor Hart has applied to the South, could I not convict the “good people” of his section, as he has convicted “the good people” of mine?