I flinched but did not pull away from his gentle hold.
"Friend Mansfield, please don't be so disquieted. I have not made jest of you. I'm truly impressed that our interaction has inspired you to learn so much about me. Your journeys into the realm of Morpheus are truly touching. The official records are one thing. Your dreams and imaginative speculations are another and quiet intriguing. You have discovered some truth, but not my entire story. Before we go into the rightness and wrongness of your assumptions, tell me the name of the delightful young lady you held so lovingly and danced with so grandly."
Fully taken aback and reactively speaking as the wolf, I responded, "Why, sir, you know everything. Haven't you been able to ferret that out with all your messing around in my thoughts and memories?"
"Sir, I'm with you when you speculate, read, study, work, even dream on the subject of your research-me. I do not intrude when you are in your own story. Your dance partner is your business; but when you are in my business, well, it is my business." Thus he explained our mystic relatedness with condescending patience and infuriating emphasis.
Then he proceeded, with lawyer-like precision, to review the facts I'd presented. He adroitly dissected my 'evidence' and dream impressions.
"Pray, let us take the 'information' from your dream." He put great stress on the word information. "First, there is Johnson and I. We were brothers of the spirit as well as ideas. I failed him, as I failed my country. I turned my back on the country my father had helped birth in battle. Friend Johnson forgave me. Forgiveness-mercy premised on betrayal-is a most noble attribute." His tone communicated regret and wonderment.
"Sir, the conservative Revolutionary War merely birthed a nation and idea. The years from 1776 to Appomattox were a period of a troubled process: defining what our nation truly meant. Those decades from 1780 until 1860 were years of radical development fueled by Jacksonian application of ideals of liberty and popular democratic governance. The Civil War was the violent resolution of what American ideals signified and to whom they applied-whether to some or to all Americans. That bloodbath confirmed the humanity of Negros and their share in the American ideal."
He stopped talking and my harshness weakened. I calmly went on and developed his analysis. "Yes, Mr. Jones, my feeling is that the victory of the North in the Civil War secured the ideal of a nation for all Americans. That violent experience forced the principle of the equality of black people on a resisting, dominant, white culture. Throughout America, the years since the Civil War have been a struggle to adapt to the cultural demands of the changes: creating, growing, tending and spiritually affirming one nation of diverse peoples. The last century and a half has been an effort to save the nation from damnation brought on by the sins of the past. Racist engendered slavery surely is American's great original sin. It was and is the cause of legions of other outrages against community. You might say Americans since Appomattox have had an opportunity to repent and grow a redeemed national soul."