Chammy, I have been reading James and Patricia McPherson’s “Lamson of the Gettysburg” lately, and had one of those coincidental contemporary moments right when the shooting happened.
I had just read Lamson’s letter about his experience helping Robert Smalls, the black sailor who commandeered a CSA steamer in Charleston harbor during the Civil War, along with a crew of fellow slaves, men and women, and navigated right past a fleet of CSA battleships to head out to sea, where he surrendered the ship to Lieutenent Lamson.
One of the reasons Smalls gave for their desperate, quite potentially deadly act was that the slaves around Charleston were being punished so severely, as if they were responsible for the depredations and deprivations from the war that was descending on their wicked masters.
I do believe what we saw recently can be traced to the same sort of evil, twisted projection that made those people so desperate back then. How to describe it or put it into words that don’t encompass some sort of primal evil is difficult. But this moment of history study, at the same time the tragedy took place, put them together for me, profoundly.