The deeper question for me as someone who has taught this controversy and the Civil War for years is can we handle the nuance?

The deep South led by South Carolina seceded because they were afraid Lincoln would abolish Slavery. He did, but reluctantly.

Republicans did not let the South secede peacefully because to them the Union was sacred.

Virginia and North Carolina only seceded because Lincoln called up troops to repress a rebellion and Lee chose to be more loyal to Virginia than the United States.

Lee paid the ultimate price of having his home and estate confiscated as the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.

To me this nuance and complicated history is important.

Lee was somehow BOTH a racist slaveholder and a Christian gentleman.

His Christianity was "Slave Holder Religion" as Thoreau, Douglass, Theodore Parker, and many others argued.

Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and many others emphasized the liberation stories in scripture, not the obedience ones. We need to understand that as well.

The first country in Europe to abolish slavery was the French in 1792 under the Jacobins who gave us the Guillotine and the reign of terror. They also abolished the Christian calendar and turned Notre Dame into the temple of reason.

Somehow we need to hold this tension and provide the opportunity for individuals and societies to evolve and change.

I totally get the rage. I have taught the Black Panthers AND George Wallace for my entire career as an educator.

I prefer the voices of Gandhi, King, Mandela, and Mother Theresa. Somehow we need to preserve the quality of mercy. We need to remember that Amazing Grace is as much part of the American Creed as the Declaration of Independece.

If Obama could sing it in Charleston, then I think we should at least hum it now.

It may be our only path to a better future.