Crucible of Reconstruction: War, Radicalism, and Race in Louisiana, 1862-1877 Book

Critics want to lump this book in with other accounts of Lost Cause mythology, but Wilson has been clear about what he does and does not support regarding the Confederacy.

Wilson answers the questions "What is your view of Southern Slavery?" and "What is a paleo-confederate?"

Here ("With a Bit of Menthol"; March 9, 2013), Wilson writes, "I have said for some time that America is long overdue for an adult conversation about race. And by adult conversation, I do not mean white people being patronizing and telling blacks to 'get over it,' and I do not mean privileged blacks playing the victim card a lot more poorly than did their grandparents, who were the actual victims of a lot more stupid gunk. . . . Unfortunately, the more we have a need for an adult conversation, the less capable we seem to be of actually having one. For a conversation needs to have more involved in it than one side venting grievances, or the other side blithely pretending that nothing bad ever happened. There are whites who do that, but I have not been in their number."

See here ("Patrick 'Nostradamus' Henry"; March 14, 2013) for interaction with Bryan Loritts and Thabiti Anyabwile. Regarding the Doug-Thabiti interaction, see here for Piper's praise. See here for more (also available on Facebook).

See here ("How Koinonia Conquers"; March 15, 2013) for Wilson's comments on Philemon and slavery.

Maybe ("The Grove of Ashtaroth"; July 30, 2015) you should "lighten up with the lectures about America's original sin of slavery and racism when you live in a city with a Planned Parenthood chapter that has dismembered thousands of little, black children," especially if you've never publicly protested Planned Parenthood. "More black children are chopped into pieces in New York City than are born in New York City. . . . So if you felt a little tell-tale exquisite thrill of self-righteous pleasure when the Confederate flag came down in South Carolina, then congratulations. You are the problem."

For more on the flag and the fight over symbols, see here ("A Coalition of Dust Bunnies"; August 26, 2015) where Wilson argues that people are wildly inconsistent: "Now it really is reasonable to ask what an African-American Christian thinks when he sees that Confederate flag on a fellow Christian's pick-up truck. Let me repeat that'that is a reasonable question. It should be taken into account. What would a charitable approach to this be? I don't despise this question. What I despise is all the special pleading and hypocrisy. So if we want our redneck brethren to learn how to remove such offensive stickers from their vehicles, we could begin by calling on all hipster Christians to show them the way by scraping their Obama/Biden stickers off. You know, Barack 'God Bless Planned Parenthood' Obama. So with rednecks confronted with a reasonable question, it is also reasonable to ask what the thirteen million African-American children who were aborted since Roe think when they see the American flag. But of course, they were never given the opportunity to think anything about it because we killed them first. They won't ever see the American flag that flew over and authorized their 'legal' slaughter. They don't know what to think about it because we sold their brains to StemExpress. What flag was flying outside the Supreme Court the day they settled Roe? And you want to judge the old Confederacy?"

Here ("This Crimson Carnage"; May 16, 2016), Wilson argues that the Confederate flag should be removed, but not for the reasons that many people argue. "What I am rejecting is demonization. And to simply go along with what [the left is] currently demanding is to help establish their authority to demonize. I don't want to accede control of that process to them. I don't want them to have the demonization gun'I know where they are going to point it next. So I do want to replace the flag but I don't want to do it in a way that enthrones totalitarians, giving them complete control over our dictionary of symbols. These are the people who don't know the difference between boys and girls. These are the people who fiercely condemn female circumcision in Saudi Arabia and applaud genital mutilation by another name in California. These are the people who are willing to call people racists if they want to spend less than we take in. So mark me down as happy to replace the flag'but I just don't want to replace it with a white one. And I understand the rainbow is taken."

Wilson condemns racism, but not the kind ("What Makes Racism Sinful"; June 17, 2016) that includes everything "from microagressions to expressing the view at Tea Party Rallies that budgets should balance."

For more interaction with Thabiti on voting for Hillary, see here ("John the Baptist's Yard Sign"; Aug. 3, 2016), where he gets into slavery again (Wilson is a gradualist on both slavery and abortion). In this essay, Wilson gives a good summary of what the New Testament says about slavery.

Here ("The Sinkhole Sinai"; May 4, 2017) Wilson responds to Merritt's charge that he's an "unhinged racist."

Here are some responses to Joel McDurmon on related topics:
Review of The Bounds of Love (April 1, 2016)
Post re: social justice (Sept. 10, 2018)
Post on slavery and race relations (Dec. 20, 2018)

In light of the fact that the #MeToo movement has now come for MLK'a man who was not only a serial adulterer with more than 40 women, but who also used language as vile as Trump has used, laughed while watching a friend rape a woman, and participated in orgies'this post ("MLK, Consequentialism, and More"; May 29, 2019), which is part of a series of posts reviewing Woke Church by Eric Mason (who also appreciates Eugene Genovese as a historian), is timely.

Here's a post re: "The Slaves of Jonathan Edwards" (Sept. 18, 2019). Here's Part 2 (Sept. 25, 2019), which clarifies that Edwards's participation in a wicked institution (slavery) is not necessarily sinful, as he could have been doing his best to give the slave woman (who was going to be a slave, no matter what he did) as decent a life as he could, whereas another master may have not'the point is that we do not know, and a blanket condemnation of him is not only inappropriate, but unbiblical. Here's a related post on white supremacy.

Here's a link to Southern Slavery as it Was.

I've heard that this book is the one to read to erase the idea that the condition of slaves was really quite tolerable.