I have always been intrigued by stories of slave descendants meeting descendants of slave owners.  Such stories add an immediacy to our nation’s history and serve to remind us that in the grand scheme of things our Civil War was not that long ago. Sometimes, for reasons I do not need to explain, the individuals are actual blood relations.  Sometimes not.  The book on this is of course Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family, which came out in the late 1990s.  I am surprised by the lack of bitterness and generosity of spirit that usually surrounds such gatherings.  Recently Wayne Hunter showed up at a family reunion in South Carolina.