I happen to be in the middle of teaching W.E.B. Dubois' amazing workThe Souls of Black Folkto Stanford freshmen. It talks a lot about the failures of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow from an on-the-ground perspective. In addition, we’ve just done an episode entitledRace Matters, which got me reading Chris Lebron’s fine book,The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea. If you haven’t read either book, it is worth reading both, but definitely don't miss Dubois since it is essential reading for every American or anyone who wants to understand America.

我最近也一直在思考特朗普总统的幕僚长约翰·凯利将军(General John Kelly)的言论，他认为南北双方不愿就奴隶制问题妥协是导致内战的主要原因。根据我最近教授和阅读的内容，我想和你们分享一些关于妥协和奴役的哲学和历史思想。凯利实际上完全颠倒了。

南北双方在奴隶制及其延续问题上的妥协，首先埋下了内战的种子。这些妥协旨在使一个新的但脆弱的联盟成为可能。他们从一开始就影响了我们的政治。他们在这个国家的存在和灵魂中植入了致命的奴隶制病毒。随着人们不断做出越来越苛刻的妥协，病毒越来越大。战争愈演愈烈，最终爆发为内战。

If you are unfamiliar with the extent to which the North actually compromised with the South over slavery, continuing long after Lincoln's death, check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' long but illuminating Twitter thread on the topic:

Regarding John Kelly's creationist theorizing on Lee and the Civil War, its worth pointing out a few things.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates)October 31, 2017

关键在于，内战之所以变得必要，正是因为在奴隶制问题上最初和持续的妥协。It is no mere accident of history that alone among the slave-holding nations of the New World, it took a war, and a total war at that, to eliminate the virus. Even after the war, when some dared hope, however briefly, that the deadly virus was finally eradicated, it turned out that the North was not done compromising with the South. It was another compromise—one that gave the Republican Party the presidency (in another contested presidential election) and gave the South back over to the control of the defeated white plantation class in exchange—that led to the dark era of Jim Crow and the reintroduction of the briefly dormant virus of slavery but by another name.

The undebatable lesson of history is that there are times when compromise is the enemy of the good, the enemy of justice, the enemy of progress. The point is not that compromise is always bad. Sometimes compromise is the only way forward. Practical wisdom, or what Aristotle calledphronesis它包括知道什么时候该妥协，什么时候该坚持原则并为之战斗。真希望我们的领导人能明智地知道其中的区别。