Nation: That Soul Is Stout

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Dallas in particular, Texas in general, and the U.S. as a whole was in an agony of self-reproach. Somehow the conflicts of political and sociological difference, which are always bitter and are historically endowed with passion, had been translated into something unique to this day and age—a climate in which, and only in which, the assassination of President Kennedy could have occurred.

In his Thanksgiving message President Johnson made a great point of it, urged U.S. citizens "to close down the poison springs of hatred and intolerance and fanaticism." Texas' Governor John Connally, still in bed, said: "I think we all must suffer for a lack of tolerance, lack of understanding, the passion, the prejudice, the hate and the bigotry which permeates the whole society in which we live and which manifested itself here on Friday."

Cried New Mexico's Democratic Governor Jack M. Campbell: "I hope this takes some of the malice out of people and makes them realize that it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable or hateful." Judge Roy Mayhall, chairman of Alabama's Democratic Party, said: "America has been on a drunken spree of hate, and we in Alabama share the blame." Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon pleaded with U.S. citizens to "pledge ourselves to fight this tendency of hatred and violence." And Dr. James R. Allen, a Baptist minister in Dallas, said from his Thanksgiving Day pulpit that Kennedy's death was triggered by just one "element in our city" but that the "white heat of a hate-filled atmosphere allowed the necessary warmth for this element to crawl out from under the rocks to be seen."

"Not a Flaw." In the emotion of the moment, such hair-shirtism was inevitable. But it would be as wrong to accuse a whole people or a nation of such extremism as it would be to argue for hatred. And perhaps it remained for Kentucky Republican Thruston Morton, rising in the U.S. Senate, to best place it all within context: "It was not a flaw in the American system or the American character that struck down John Kennedy. It was not the sin of a city or of its citizens. It was not a tragedy that struck from some dark stain of violence on the American system or in the American soul. And we do not serve the best interests of our nation, or of the memory of a murdered President, by letting wrongly placed recriminations overcome the good sense of this great nation."

The man who shot John Kennedy was a "stranger to the American heritage," said Morton, and his "mind had been warped by an alien violence, not by a native condition."

"Let us mourn the terrible event," cried Morton, "but let us not mourn for the American soul—for that soul is stout and lighted by truth and faith. Let the blame be on him who actually committed the crime . . . What happened was not America's fault. Only the sober realization of that can make our mourning meaningful and not torture it with a guilt that is undeserved and unworthy of the cause in which our Presidents live and for which sometimes they tragically die."