Renounce the past? What an idiot you are! The past, what past? 1865? Your side lost the war it started. What a maroon!
The first step to the cure is to admit your error jmac! Free yourself from obeisance to the cult of those ruthless politicians who killed the thousands and thousands that resisted their lust for unrestrained, centralized power!
The marble idol in the Lincoln Temple is no worthier of worship than the deified Caesars in their temples in Rome or the paraffin Lenin in Red Square. The veneration heaped upon that ambitious infidel railroad lawyer is heresy! The idol cannot help you! Abandon the cult jmac! Renounce your fealty to the terrorist John Brown and his Radical Republican supporters!