On "The Courthouse Ring"

Malcom Gladwell made some pretty awesome connections in his article about Southern Liberalism and To Kill a Mockingbird. I must admit, like everyone else, I never read into TKAM that much. I took it for an assigned reading in English 9. I enjoyed it, but never read into it.

The connection to Jim Folsom and other Southern Liberals was excellently founded. Throughout the 1800s, one could have said that Northern moderates and liberals fell into the same category. For instance, the Free-Soil Party which later evolved into the Republican party are examples that are similar.

The Free-Soil Party didn't necessarily fight for the abolition of slavery, only for the constraint of it. The party was willing to take action to prevent the spread of the institution, but were willing to allow it to continue where it was, with the hopes that enough sentiment against it would soon follow. This is like Jim Folsom and Atticus Finch because all of these parties are willing to put their foot down to prevent further injury but will not take measures to directly reverse adverse effects.

The Republican Party formed from the Free-Soilers and other parties. As it was created in our country's darkest hour on the eve of the Civil War, it was somewhat more radical than its predecessors. The Republican Party had the same free-soil policy, but as some Republicans began to take their ideals further, they began to call for more immediate aboltion.

Abraham Lincoln was the Republican Party's second presidential candidate. He is very much and Atticus Finch. Lincoln's initial goals were to keep the union together. Originally, he planned to bring the South back to the Union, institute free-soil policies and continue slavery as it was and watch it wane away. However, following Gettysburg, he realized that the war was no longer going to be solely a battle over the Union or secession. The war became idealogical as well and that was solidified with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. That action, too, though is also a very Atticus Finch-esque one. For being as famous as it is, the Emancipation Proclamation did effectively nothing. It was just a statement of ideology rather than a true ultimatum of any sort.

In late 1863, when Lincoln gave his famed address to dedicate Gettysburg National Cemetery, he began by saying, "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That sentence has been immortalized in history. The tale that Lincoln wrote his address on an envelope on the train to Gettysburg is a myth. He planned this carefully. It was finally then that he had moved away from being a bystander liberal and became a fully active crusader. If we didn't mean to truly find equality, he wouldn't have said "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That phrase is not just rhetorical flourish to make a citizen feel better about the Union. It is a statement of principal, morality, and a call to uphold that principal.