McCOMB — It’s tempting to criticize the political incivility that pervades the Internet and cable television these days, and I do my share of it.
Worse yet are the outright lies, half- truths and out-of-context conclusions in forwarded messages that many of us get via e-mail.
I sometimes wonder if the professed Christians who pass along some of this stuff aren’t violating the Biblical commandment not to bear false witness. Since they aren’t swearing to it in court, maybe not. Still it seems a bit unChristian.
Be all that as it may, when you start reading American history, you are immediately reminded that incivility, violence and meanness aren’t new in American society or politics.
It goes back to our Founding Fathers, some of whom were more adept at character assassination than any of the politicians around today.
They didn’t have the Internet or television to spread the venom, but they did a pretty good job of it in speeches, handbills, pamphlets and newspapers which made no pretense of being objective.
For the past couple of years I’ve been struggling through Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton.
It’s fascinating reading, although the 731 pages are quite a bit slower in turning than a John Grisham novel. So, I read a few chapters, then read a novel or a shorter non-fiction like Curtis Wilkie’s “Fall of the House of Zeus” and then picked up the Hamilton book again.
Hamilton was a remarkable individual. As Chernow’s book points out, he was an illegitimate, mostly self-taught orphan born in the British West Indies. He died at 49 from a gunshot wound sustained in a duel in which he may have deliberately missed his opponent, the outgoing vice president of the United States.
Perhaps the most important figure in American history who never attained the presidency, Hamilton rose at a very young age to become George Washington’s top aide in the Revolutionary War, a battlefield hero and after the war a leading author of the “Federalist Papers.”
As the nation’s first treasury secretary, under President Washington, Hamilton pioneered America’s tax and budget systems, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard and the central bank.
Yet both Hamilton and one of his sons were killed in pistol duels arising over political rhetoric which got too personal.
Hamilton’s killer, Aaron Burr, had been vice president in Thomas Jefferson’s first term.
By the way, Jefferson and Hamilton were perpetual adversaries, but Hamilton distrusted Burr more than Jefferson. Jefferson also disliked Burr, who almost beat him in the presidential race. So Jefferson had Burr removed as vice president after one term and later had him charged with treason, although Burr was never convicted.
Jefferson comes across in the book as not quite the hero he often is viewed as today. Unlike Hamilton and Washington, he never fought in the war but, as Virginia’s governor, fled the British. He was the consummate politician who would change courses on issues when expedient. He fathered illegitimate children with one of his slaves. He was accused by political opponents of being an atheist, although Chernow writes, “Jefferson was a deist who doubted the divinity of Christ, but not an atheist.”
But Jefferson was an effective and pragmatic president. He kind of reminds you of Bill Clinton, whose middle name, fittingly, is Jefferson.
If you want to read some early 20th century history about political and journalistic incivility closer to home, Google Theodore Bilbo and Fred Sullens on the Internet or go to the library and check out some books on Mississippi history.
Bilbo, who served as governor and U.S. senator during his career, was pistol-whipped in the smoking car of a train leaving Starkville by J.J. Henry in retribution for remarks Bilbo made about his birth and parentage too crude to print in a family newspaper.
Earlier Bilbo had been caned in Yazoo City by Walter Gibbs, whom he had called a “renegade Confederate soldier.”
This caused Sullens, editor of the Jackson Daily News and a Bilbo foe, to use this headline in his newspaper: “War Horse of Yazoo Broke Good Walking Stick Over Head of Poplarville Pervert.”
Sullens himself later was caned in Jackson by Gov. Paul B. Johnson Sr. for his vitriolic commentary on the governor.
No matter how rough the rhetoric gets in the elections in Mississippi this year or the national ones in 2012, there probably won’t be any duels, pistol-whippings or canings.
