Reader John Steele Gordon writes, concerning the Wachovia announcement: “The WSJ had a story on May 10th about the same thing, only then it was J.P. Morgan Chase’s turn to grovel and donate. I wrote the following, which they had the bad sense not to publish:

Regarding the article about J.P. Morgan Chase spending heaven knows how much money to uncover the fact that some remote corporate ancestor had held a mortgage on slaves:

Laws requiring corporations to do this are a historians’ relief act and, naturally, I’m all in favor of employing historians. But far more perniciously, these laws in effect work “corruption of the blood.” This medieval doctrine visited numerous legal disabilities upon the descendants of those attainted for treason, sometimes for generations. My distant ancestor Lt. Col. Daniel Axtell, for instance, was hanged, drawn, and quartered for the crime of regicide, having commanded the guard at the trial of King Charles I. His son, unable to practice law in England because of his father’s crime, emigrated to South Carolina.

The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, forbade this grotesque inequity in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, and England abolished it in the reign of King William IV, 170 years ago.

Now it’s back, at least for corporations if not, yet, people. But in fact it’s even worse. Daniel Axtell at least committed a crime under the laws of the day and was savagely punished for it. The Citizens Bank of Louisiana, fully four generations ago, did nothing whatever that was illegal and suffered no retribution in its day. But its remote descendants — the stockholders of J. P. Morgan Chase — are being punished, ex post facto.

This is not progress.

More: Michelle Malkin, who was on the issue last week, generously links to our coverage in a post today.

Filed under: Louisiana, reparations, South Carolina