Jon Kukla's well-meant quoting of Leopold von Ranke in the debate over
present day standards applied to historical slavery issues makes me more than
a little nervous. Both the study and the teaching of history owe a great deal
to Ranke, but my experiences among his countrymen following World War II give
me great pause when it comes to "God's will" explanations of atrocities and
revisionist explanations for behavior which don't stand up under any model.
My father was in the U.S. Army and I spent six years with him in Germany
following the war. I spoke German fluently - Polish and Ukrainian reasonably
well. In addition to overhearing the conversations of adult Germans, I well
understood the cynical attitude of the average American military man to the
typical German expression of "we didn't know'' or, more frequently, "it was
different then." Some things just don't pass the smell test. The unnoticed
disappearance of six to seven million European Jews is one and that slavery
was morally a different issue in 1776 or 1826 than now is another. That it
would have required uncommon courage for a politician in Jefferson's Virginia
to have opposed slavery is a given. So is the fact of the immorality of the
system. Jefferson was a classicist. He damn well knew the arguments pro and
con on the issue. Of course there were economic issues. There always are. The
moral issues seem quiet unequivocal whether made more than two thousand years
earlier or by the abolitionists of his day.

Bill Russell
Alexandria, Virginia

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