A house divided

Kim reminded me of one more thought that struck us one the Gettysburg trip. Probably thanks largely to Abraham Lincoln, the Union, and the United States in general, was shockingly forgiving of the Confederacy immediately after the end of the war. All of the soldiers were regranted citizenship, and none of the generals or Southern leaders were hung as traitors would have been in nearly any other situation. Not only were the traitors tolerated, they were allowed to put up memorials to their fallen heroes, name streets and parks after Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, and were brought back into national life as equals to the states they had just spurned. And on top of that the North poured money into reconstructing the South. This is a remarkable example of forgiveness and of a nation collectively putting past wrongs behind it. The South could have been held responsible for the deaths of 650,000 people but they weren't. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but it's remarkable.