What Wachovia Corp. apologized for:

The short take of course is: they once were involved in slavery and slaveholding.

A bit more nuanced take, tho, might include this, as supplied by Wesley Pruden , editor in chief of the Washington Times:

Wachovia acquired First Union Bank in 2001, which in turn had acquired First Railroad & Banking Corp. (1986), which had acquired Georgia Railroad Bank and Trust Co. (1954), which had acquired Georgia Railroad Bank (1929), which had acquired Georgia Railroad and Banking Company (1835), which had acquired the Georgia Railroad Company. Georgia Railroad was organized in 1833 to lay tracks from Augusta into the interior of Georgia, and Georgia Railroad had once purchased a slave blacksmith.

But there was more. Another acquisition in Wachovia's gene pool was the Bank of Charleston, which during the three decades before the War Between the States had accepted title to "up to 529 slaves" as collateral for loans.

So, if Wachovia is tainted by this connection to slavery, would it be cleansed by any connection to Union forces during the Civil War? It seems to me that if tainting is possible, then cleansing is the flip side of the coin: Impossible to have one without the other. If some ancestral entity made loans to the US or to US military suppliers during the Civil War, that should even the balance, wouldn't it?

Somehow I think the Apostles of Grievance would find that suggestion challenging, offensive, and preferably downright prosecutably racist. Such is life.

I do think that dragging up 150 year old outrages committed by now-dead ppl against now-dead ppl- and they were certainly monstrous ones- is exactly the thing that has kept the world at war for hundreds if not thousands of years. I don't know if the Apostlers are unaware of that, or if they understand that very well indeed and are determined to make a good living off of exacerbating ethnic and racial hostility.

Mr. bin Laden and his equally distinguished confreres manage to be outraged by the "tragedy of Iberia" -the reconquest of Spain by the Spanish which was finished in 1492- and are determined to reverse that tragedy. I have yet to hear, however, of Spanish calls for apologies and reparations from the Moors for conquering Spain in the first place. Perhaps they are missing a good bet.

And of course the eastern Europeans might lay a similar claim against the Moors' descendants for that invasion. There might be some reasonable counter-claims lodged against Transylvania, as the original Dracula- Prince Vlad, also known as The Impaler- did treat Moorish prisoners rather shabbily. Almost as badly, in fact, as we Americans apparently treat prisoners at Guantanomo. Well, ok, not quite: Vlad only camped on a hillside while watching thousands of impaled Moors take a few days to die, while of course Rummy and Cheney dance around their campfire, while roasting prisoners and marshmallows. Or something like that.

And the Greeks, what about them? Why haven't Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan sued them for the depredations of Alexander the "Great"? I bet a nickel that the Greeks haven't even thought about apologizing for that, much less offered reparations.

Lemme see now. Ah yes: The Aztecs. Now there are some ppl who owe serious payments to everybody in the neighborhood for all the slaving and sacrificing and imperializing they did before the Spanish showed up. And there were some Spaniards flayed during that little affair, so their descendants surely have a claim against Mexico as the lineal descendant of the Aztecs.

And what about the Iroquois? They not only committed war crimes against the neighbors, including poor long suffering English, but today their descendents have big casino bucks. Well worth stirring up some hatred there.

I sometimes think that one of the better things which could happen to the world is the universal destruction of archives public and private, and the re-employment of archivists and historians as executives and McDonalds clerks.

My previous post on this: Wachovia, slaves, race hustlers, & running with one's tail between one's legs.

Thanks to Power Line for the lead to Pruden's column.