11-01-2026, 09:36 AM
Thanks to the critics (or interlocutors). Not to be defensive, but...
This idea of poetry (as non-didactic) may be too limiting. It may be, for example, that an author could state facts (there was a butterfly, there is a chrysalis) to provoke thoughts about that situation. The same with facts of human history, perhaps?
Stepping outside the immediate discussion, the central problem with Reconstruction was that the Federals respected Southern/ex-Confederate whites too much to carry out the Radical Republicans' project of extirpating their culture. To accomplish that, they'd have had to re-mobilize an army the size of the GAR and do a Sherman on the whole eleven-state region. Jefferson Davis, Saddam-like, ordered Lee to initiate guerilla warfare against that very strategy; Forrest's KKK implemented the guerilla strategy in a more limited form. There was no way Federal forces consisting of a few regiments could deal with that, and (as Longstreet discovered in New Orleans) militias of freedmen and Unionist locals couldn't stand against Confederate veterans.
That, however, was not in the poem. At most, it might have made thoughtful readers ponder Lincoln's problem - I make no claims about that being its intent, it just lays out some thoughts about Lincoln's predicament and his reasons for it. Perhaps it could be more visual - he picks up a pen, dips it in black India ink, and writes a note to himself about the proposed colony on San Salvador, or his Navy's troubles with "contrabands" in the Sea Islands. Does that sound like something that might pass muster, if well done?
This idea of poetry (as non-didactic) may be too limiting. It may be, for example, that an author could state facts (there was a butterfly, there is a chrysalis) to provoke thoughts about that situation. The same with facts of human history, perhaps?
Stepping outside the immediate discussion, the central problem with Reconstruction was that the Federals respected Southern/ex-Confederate whites too much to carry out the Radical Republicans' project of extirpating their culture. To accomplish that, they'd have had to re-mobilize an army the size of the GAR and do a Sherman on the whole eleven-state region. Jefferson Davis, Saddam-like, ordered Lee to initiate guerilla warfare against that very strategy; Forrest's KKK implemented the guerilla strategy in a more limited form. There was no way Federal forces consisting of a few regiments could deal with that, and (as Longstreet discovered in New Orleans) militias of freedmen and Unionist locals couldn't stand against Confederate veterans.
That, however, was not in the poem. At most, it might have made thoughtful readers ponder Lincoln's problem - I make no claims about that being its intent, it just lays out some thoughts about Lincoln's predicament and his reasons for it. Perhaps it could be more visual - he picks up a pen, dips it in black India ink, and writes a note to himself about the proposed colony on San Salvador, or his Navy's troubles with "contrabands" in the Sea Islands. Does that sound like something that might pass muster, if well done?
Non-practicing atheist