While Mr. Brooks is certainly right on point, there are even shades to civil modesty. In 17th century England, those who led rebellions and failed were generally hanged, cut down while alive, drawn and quartered with their entrails burned before them. President Lincoln, in his modest, allowed soldiers in the rebellion to take their rifles and go home. From them, in too many cases, came generations who invented and held to the idea of the "lost cause," who monumented their failed leaders. We now reap that whirlwind. But Lincoln was not wrong; rather some of those in Reconstruction saw a chance to invoke punishment not modesty. "Was either right?" is the wrong question; more to the point would be how do we fulfill the dreams of Lincoln's second inaugural while educating those who unwisely made war on their own land? MC is right on one thing: there are no easy answers and few absolutes. Remember, it was a Jewish lawyer that won Nazis the right to march through Skokie.