Very interesting exchanges on the Clinton and McConnell speeches. Rather than respond to the posts individually, I'll say a word or two here.

1. Catherine Clinton: a fascinating talk, for those who could follow her rather dry, stream-of-consciousness delivery (o.k., I'll accept "boring"). She seems to have irked some people in this class, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. I certainly don't think she "butchered" women's experiences at all, and I don't quite see the sensationalizing that some of you pointed to. I'm not bothered that she criticized Ken Burns. She argued that Burns's film made women's experience an auxiliary to men's, of the compensatory type ("here's how even women contributed to the war effort . . ."), and I think that criticism is valid. On the other hand, Burns included women's voices far more extensively than any other popular-media account of the war that had been produced up to that time (1991). Clinton delivered what I take to be a friendly criticism of Burns.

2. Mitch McConnell on John Crittenden: having the Senate minority leader on campus is a pretty big deal and a coup for EKU. He is a person of national stature, and I'm glad some of you scored some photos with him. I didn't hear his talk, so I can't comment on its academic quality. I'd say this about Crittenden and compromise: his proposals to end secession would have provided federal guarantees of slavery, which I have a hard time stomaching. The abolitionist perspective that most of us (all?) share makes it hard to see the moral value in that kind of compromise. And I'm taken with Lincoln's argument that the compromises amounted to blackmail, and if the US had accepted them in 1861, Southern states would have threatened secession to gain more "compromises" in 1862 and every year beyond that. I'm glad Crittenden helped keep Kentucky from seceding, but then again he opposed the Emancipation Proclamation. Had he lived past 1863, would he have moved in a more Confederate direction, as many Kentuckians did after the EP went into effect?
     We seem to have in our country a deep respect for statesmen who seek compromise (Clay and Crittenden being Kentucky's fine examples of the pragmatic legislator). Hardliners, whether abolitionists of the 1850s or Tea Partiers of today tend to disparage compromise as a violation of moral principle. I don't know how Sen. McConnell wants us to see him -- in the tradition of Clay/Crittenden or a defender of moral righteousness? He hasn't really acted in either tradition. He certainly has not been a compromiser, and I've never heard him articulate a compelling moral or idealistic vision. How will he want to be remembered?