***
He was Jones of Old Lincoln and had to be that regardless of the cost. As he had followed his heart rather than his head when Tennessee seceded, he embraced again in 1870 his passion for democracy: free men, free vote. Suffrage was limited to adult males, with black males and poor whites systematically excluded from the rights and benefits of citizenship. Jones sought to reverse that. Women's voting rights were the flighty ambitions of only a few progressives and would not be a significant issue on the public agenda for another generation or two. Native Americans would not gain the right to vote until the 1920s. In the context of 1870 Tennessee, Jones was assuredly on 'the right side of the Lord.' Very often, that's a mighty tough place to be.
Jones' fight against the poll tax stands as one of the finer moments in popular government. It is unacknowledged by history, but it did most certainly happen and it was worthy. It is deserving of recognition such as that accorded to great Americans by John F. Kennedy in his Profiles in Courage.
Did his 1870 stand negate his earlier treason? I could accept that he followed his people into secession after his efforts to lead them to stand with the Union failed. It was not the stuff of epic heroism but it was quite human and acceptable in this flawed human. Righteousness in the abstract is easy. Mr. Jones went with his own folks and habits of mutuality even if it was against his better judgment. After wondering about and accepting Jones' actions, I realized he had grown quiet. I turned to him to say something in appreciation and affirmation, but could not find the words.
I could only stare at his profile as he gently moved a little forward then backward. Was this merely a dream in which some post-modern, deconstructionist guru phantom dressed in nineteenth century, funereal broadcloth is imagined and invoked by my struggling soul in order to affirm my wishes, my frustrations, my bias?
Had I become morbidly twisted contorting to my favorite HBO Sunday night soap operas? Had my feelings of abject isolation and loneliness and miserable helplessness within a culture whose decadence and gullibility seemed inexhaustible brought forth these notions and put them in the mouth of some specter that had happened to live in my hometown nearly two centuries ago? Had I become a delusional, hedonistic puritan indulging in my own muck of love-hate for myself and all of existence?
Along with my usual morbid self-scrutiny, I also considered the more incredible possibility that eternity is a dimension in which learning is extended without the limits of self-centeredness. It might be that in that mystical 'realm' all the ragged, sharp edges of experience are brought together into a symmetry of wholeness. In the hereafter, hell may be a finishing school in which false assumptions, limited truths, mean and foolish choices are studied for the purpose of blessed wisdom. Upon graduation to heaven, a new spirit emerges. Heaven may be a place in which wisdom is celebrated and missionaries are sent forth as phantoms, angels, or specters to unfortunate seekers in this world. Their ministry is to bring the grace of wisdom to those seduced by hollow knowledge and self-absorption.