SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
SNAP SHOTS By George Middleton I T IS ONE of the platitudes of history that each generation tries to correct the judgments of another. When the poet said that "each age is an age that is dying...
...Some must be crucified before they are deified in the pop ular mind, ever searching as it does in the past for examples to correct, in turn, the errors of the present The compensatory me chanism must work, the age needs its devils as well as its Gods on whom can be projected its hopes and its despairs...
...if they are rebels, their greatest crime is their failure...
...When the poet said that "each age is an age that is dying or one that is coming to birth," he uttered a very profound truth...
...History, however, as I have said, has a way of correcting its mistakes when passions are cooled and perspectives are achieved...
...These remarks were unnoticed by Petigru, who calmly proceeded on his way...
...Paris today is dotted with statues of the men it burned and we, as school children, are...
...Nearly all the great figures who have fought for any kind of tolerance, political, economic or otherwise, have been scorned or rejected or shot down upon the advance line...
...To keep the historical perspective is difficult...
...Brilliant lawyer and statesman, he, of all men in the South, fought with his great eloquence not only against nullification but also, in his waning years, against secession...
...And upon it the epitaph penned by Woodrow Wilson, I add it for the thought it inspires of the courageous man it covers: UN A WED BY OPINION, UNSEDUCED BY FLATTERY, UNDISMAYED BY DISASTER HE CONFRONTED LIFE WITH ANTIQUE COURAGE...
...If they are prophets they are mocked and laughed at...
...yet it is essential if one wishes to retain large sympathies, warmed by a gentle tolerance for all that is human...
...Petigru at this point raised his umbrella and rewarded his accoster with a vigorous blow, and then made his way unimpeded...
...I don't understand you, James,' said a friend...
...This man called you 'liar' and 'thief' and 'scoundrel' and you paid no attention to him...
...He was only a name to me and yet his was one of the great spirits that went into the making of our country...
...Men thus become symbols...
...But when he called you 'Unionist' you hit him...
...But damn it, I am a Unionist!' Time has revealed the rightness of Petigru's position...
...Held in high esteem as he had been, his advocacy ot fhe unpopular cause only increased the bitterness of the attacks upon him...
...Others have taken their place and from the thin line that follows some have gained immortality in their own life time...
...I didn't mind him calling me 'liar,' 'thief,' 'scoundrel,'' was the answer, 'because I am none of those...
...Then slowly the shrouds are lifted and the great forerunners come into their own...
...Without moralizing too much upon the historical incident, it is fitting to recall from time to time the memory of men like him...
...Time and circumstance are necessary to make them heroe3 while they still live...
...His high courage was the true index could it but have been recognized...
...The World quotes an anecdote of those days: "It is relater that on one occasion as the eminent attorney came from the court room, where his oratory had held an audience spellbound, a man who might have been under the influence of genuine pre-Civil war stuff accosted him very offensively, applying to him such terms as "Liar...
...Michael's church in Charleston there is a tombstone upon which is Petigru's name...
...In St...
...Those who were opposed to the late war well know what courage it took to oppose it and to stand up in the Halls of Government and raise a voice against a stimulated public clamor...
...Petigru was reviled and persecuted with all the refined methods men have devised...
...Amid all the easy casuistry by which men justify their compromises with rectitude and the little expediencies with which they make detours from the high road, it is good to hold the example of those who have walked with head erect along the dark shadows of popular disapproval when the footing was not easy...
...taught to admire the very men and women who, had they been living, our great conservative forces would tel] us to reject...
...Men with Vision and a message, who dare to express it even at the cost of martyrdom, often come too early or too late in the rhythm for popular acclaim...
...IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR HE WITHSTOOD HIS PEOPLE FOR HIS COUNTRY: BUT HIS PEOPLE DID HOMAGE TO THE MAN WHO HELD HIS CONSCIENCE HIGHER THAN HIS PRAISE...
...Scoundrel...
...Random thoughts like these keep coming to me as I sit here beneath the trees reading a news story in the New York World concerning James Louis Petigru...
...was hurled at him...
...Otherwise they are the outcasts of the moment...
...Then, "You Unionist...
...How much better to be wrong with courage than to be right by accident...
...AND HIS COUNTRY HEAPED HER HONOURS ON THE GRAVE OF THE PATRIOT TO WHOM, LIVING, HIS OWN RIGHTEOUS SELF-RESPECT SUFFICED ALIKE FOR MOTIVE AND REWARD...
...Today his statue rests serenely in the Council Chamber at Charleston, South Carolina, along with those of Washington and LaFayette...
...For us the example is all important...
...When under the influence of mob psychology they are anxious to express themselves cruelly to increase their own sense of right...
...Thief...
...AND DEATH WITH CHRISTIAN HOPE...
...Bom in 1789, his life reached into the civil war...
Vol. 18 • September 1926 • No. 9
