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Complicity is an embarrassing word.

It is something which most of us try to get out from under.

Like the cowboy in Stephen Crane's `` Blue Hotel '', we run around crying, `` Well, I didn't do anything, did I ''??

Robert Penn Warren puts it this way in `` Brother To Dragons '': `` The recognition of complicity is the beginning of innocence '', where innocence, I think, means about the same thing as redemption.

A man must be able to say, `` Father, I have sinned '', or there is no hope for him.

Lincoln understood this better than most when he said in his `` Second Inaugural '' that God `` gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came ''.

He also spoke of `` the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years in unrequited toil ''.

Lincoln was historian and economist enough to know that a substantial portion of this wealth had accumulated in the hands of the descendants of New Englanders engaged in the slave trade.

After how many generations is such wealth ( mounting all the while through the manipulations of high finance ) purified of taint??

It is a question which New Englanders long ago put out of their minds.

But didn't they get off too easy??

The slaves never shared in their profits, while they did share, in a very real sense, in the profits of the slave-owners: they were fed, clothed, doctored, and so forth ; ;

they were the beneficiaries of responsible, paternalistic care.