Lafayette Journal and Courier

Documents show war perspective
By Tanya Brown , Journal and Courier

Gordon Kingma, a retired banker from Lafayette, learned something new about history Tuesday afternoon.

Kingma attended a presentation by Michael Morrison, a Purdue University professor, at the Lafayette Rotary Club's weekly luncheon.

In his lecture, Morrison drew parallels between The Gettysburg Address and The Declaration of Independence, two documents which are currently on display at Purdue.

He discussed the political events that led up to the Civil War, and the idea that non-slave-owning white Southerners would not have entered the Civil War if slavery were the only issue at hand, an idea that Kingma found interesting.

"It opened up a new train of thought, at least for me," said Kingma, "that maybe we weren't all that far apart when this terrible war started."

Both Northerners and Southerners, Morrison holds, were viewing the conflicts through the eyes of the Revolutionary War. Each, he said, thought they were acting in the best interests of the values instilled in the Declaration of Independence.

"They had concluded," Morrison said of the Southern states, "that Lincoln's election was the failure of democracy. It was not because of any qualities he had, but because only half the states had voted for him -- the Northern half."

Lincoln's election represented, in the minds of many Southerners, the beginning of an age where the North, which had taken issue with the South because of it's stance on slavery, would be treated as inferior, as the colonies were by Britain before the Revolutionary War.

America versus the other side

"Northerners saw slavery and what they understood as the civilization that it had produced as un-American, not following from Revolutionary principles," Morrison said. "Southerners believed that what they saw as the capitalist urban society of the North, did not represent the true America."

Men on both sides of the equation argued. Some said the Declaration of Independence was written for a white America and could not be used as a basis for the slavery debate, while some who protested that thought said the Declaration of Independence defended rule by the people to the point that the South ought to be left alone to do as they chose.
Still others said America could not survive unless the words of the Declaration were taken literally for every man, regardless of color or creed.

"Lincoln had it right -- or half right -- at Gettysburg," said Morrison, in conclusion. "Northerners and Southerners perished by the tens of thousands to ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'"

Martha Chiscon, a Rotary Club member, said the luncheon afforded her a different perspective on history, which she had not necessarily considered before.

"He suggested that both the north and the south were fighting for the same things" but in different ways, said Chiscon. "We say that it was all about slavery, but the Civil War was much more complicated than that."

Parallels to Iraq

Kingma said Morrison's thoughts on the two historic documents and the society that evolved around them hold present day applications and make him wonder about today's war.

"Even with the horrid problems we're going through in the Mideast right now, if you get down to the common person, you'll find a person who thinks a great deal like we do," he said, "but unfortunately, conflict arises at another level."

He holds out hope for two sides who think they are right but have difficulty reconciling those two versions of right.

There had to be a prevailing goodness that existed on both sides of the line," back then, he said, "and I suppose that's true today. I believe that wherever there is conflict, the greater good will prevail."

Want to see more?

Early printings of The Declaration of Independence and The Gettysburg Address will be on display as part of the "Individual and Society: Many Voices, Many Views" exhibit until Feb. 20 at Purdue University.

The two documents are part of an exhibition of 36 original and early-edition historic texts known as the Remnant Trust, a collection that focuses on the progression of freedom, civil rights and human dignity.

The exhibit at Purdue is open to the public and may be viewed and touched in the Stewart Center Gallery, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, with extended hours until 8 p.m. on Thursday.

Weekend hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

For more information, visit www.sla.purdue.edu/galleries or go to the Remnant Trust Web site at www.theremnanttrust.com .