The apologists in America, including many Black organizations and individuals the names of which I will not mention here, have realized great success in framing the reparations argument in the context of the ACW. Before the ACW, reparations discussions focused on not much more than variations of "We need to do what is right." The ACW however gave reparations legs and a segment of the population to blame that never existed before the ACW.

The apologists have also defined reparations around and within the ACW in order to gain political leverage and broad visibility. That does not mean that reparations goes to the very heart of the ACW, unless you care to believe that. It only means that at its present level of definition, one political agenda has so far succeeded in creating a construct in which reparations is linked, as you say, to the very heart of the American Civil War.

The apoligists are smart for they realize that to link reparations to the longer time continuum in which it has existed is a sure way to lose the argument because in that longer time continuum, it is simply impossible to nail down guilt, responsibility, much less any rationale way to administer actual reparations payments If the apologists could link reparations to, say, only the Jim Crow period, or to black discrimination during WW I, they would, but the foundation for that argument does not exist to my knowledge. The ACW is the perfect anchor for reparations for it is supported by the first census enumerations distinguishing blacks from others and the first two slave censuses (1850 and 1860).

And you are right again when you claim reparations translates to a direct condemnation of the Southern people without regard to the very real, direct and enabling participation among northerners. Again, that is part of the entire construct in which reparations has been framed.

But what is this context of which I speak, in which the reparations argument has been framed. Another name for it is historical revisionism and, in a word, that is why I do not sign up for any strengthening of the linkage between reparations and the ACW as would happen if reparations were sponsored or even tolerated on this board.

I prefer to study, research and interpret history as it happened, not as those with a purely political and personal agenda care to redefine it to suit their 21st century purposes.

In a nutshell, that is why I agree with what I interpret is Jim's position on this. I trust he will in time enlighten us with his own thoughts.