<p>Reckoning with the ancestors on my father&rsquo;s side of the family has been exhausting. I opened that Pandora&rsquo;s Box and out flew: the colonizers, the slaveholders, the rebel generals, the high-ranking Confederate officials. I&rsquo;ve mined this family history for truths that challenge the Lost Cause narrative, the pro-Confederate ideology that fuels white supremacy. The long-reaching consequences of that creed empowered the insurrectionists of Jan. 6th, 2021, so this has seemed worth doing.</p>

<p>Yet after a prolonged stint of burrowing through 19th-century Alabama archives &ndash; examining census forms itemizing human property, wills bequeathing that property, descriptions of opulent slave-built mansions &ndash; I wanted a break.&nbsp; I was ready to spend time with someone from my family who&rsquo;d been on the right side of history, a white man &ldquo;friendly to the freedom of all men,&rdquo; as&nbsp;Frederick Douglass said of Abraham Lincoln.</p>

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