Things are looking up. Of the 20 or so e-mails I got after last week’s column in which I asked that the Confederacy not be glorified in this sesquicentennial anniversary of the start of the Civil War, only a couple tried to defend, in roundabout terms, the South’s military defense of slavery. Predictably, there were also a couple of the inevitable “yobbit” responses that appear whenever there is a discussion of the Civil War, as in, “Yobbit … what about Abraham Lincoln? He wasn’t the saint that people make him out to be.”
No, he wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t perfect, but he was the perfect person for the job at that critical time. I’m of the generation that used to celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday, which is coming up in a couple of days. Instead, some government drone decided that since the birthdays of Lincoln and George Washington are only 10 days apart, we should lump them together as Presidents Day.
I don’t want to honor all of the presidents. James Buchanan fiddled while the unholy stew of slavery reached a boiling-over point. Woodrow Wilson knew World War I was coming and failed to prepare our military to fight it. Ronald Reagan (and/or his subordinates) blithely ignored the United States Constitution just to help prop up the regime of a butcher in Nicaragua. And on and on …
Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a raging abolitionist; indeed, as a young man, he probably held many of the same racist views of blacks as many of his countrymen. In retrospect, he shrewdly insisted that the war was about preserving the Union when fighting broke out. He initially kept blacks from joining the Union army and, as many are quick to point out, the Emancipation Proclamation only served to (symbolically) free the slaves that were held in Confederate territory.
Frederick Douglass supported Lincoln and realized that the president was walking a tightrope. Douglass also realized that the Emancipation Proclamation, limited in scope though it was, represented the beginning of the end for slavery everywhere in America.
As Commander in Chief, Lincoln pretty much micromanaged the war. He would spend long hours at the telegraph office, waiting for any little bit of information from the battlefields. Then, when he got bored with that, he just might visit the battlefields themselves. He would put different people in command and then (quite correctly, in most cases) would tire of their timidity and replace them.
The dashing George McClellan trained his army to a razor-fine edge, but never could find the stomach (or parts lower) to actually go and fight anybody on a grand scale. Then there was Joseph Hooker, who somehow managed to squander a 5-1 numerical advantage over Robert E. Lee in losing the battle of Chancellorsville.
Lincoln replaced Hooker with George Meade, who won the Battle of Gettysburg on the Fourth of July weekend in 1863. After winning what would prove to be the decisive battle of the Civil War, Meade wasn’t exactly fired by Lincoln for not pursuing the retreating army of General Lee, but he would have to spend the rest of the war as a subordinate to U.S. Grant.
The thing that impresses me most about Lincoln happened only a few days before his assassination. Richmond, Va. was the capital of the Confederacy. Despite being only 100 miles from Washington, D.C., both capital cities remained unscathed during the four-year war. If the South had tried to capture Washington (or the Union, Richmond), it would have left the other capital city unprotected and probably would have resulted in a trading-of-queens scenario.
But just days before the end of the war, there were no troops left to defend Richmond and Jefferson Davis’ entire government fled the city in advance of onrushing Union troops. Lincoln, who was out in the field at the time, decided that he wanted to see Richmond for himself. Despite warnings from military leaders and other advisors, Lincoln got in a rowboat with a couple of men and headed across the river to Richmond. (The Secret Service existed at the time, but its job was fighting counterfeiting.)
Lincoln got out of the boat and walked onto the dock, becoming one of the first Northerners to set foot in Richmond since before the war began. A group of slaves were working nearby and immediately dropped to their knees as if in the presence of the messiah. They recognized him from pictures and now he, himself, had come to free them from their bondage.
Embarrassed, Lincoln said, “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy. …”
He was immediately surrounded by hundreds, and then thousands, of blacks. Afterward he walked the streets of Richmond alone and unprotected. Residents of Richmond who looked out their windows probably couldn’t believe what they saw.
It wasn’t until he returned home in Washington, D.C. that a cowardly Confederate sympathizer ended Lincoln’s life, a life we should all celebrate on Saturday.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2011.
Not surprisingly Tom leaves out the fact that Lincoln started the Republican party, suspended habeas corpus, conducted illegal renditions, seized private property at will, and suspended other sections of the US Constitution. Not that I completely disagree will all of these actions by Lincoln (it was, or was near the Civil War), but just wanted to denote Tom’s column as bit of a hagiography of Abraham Lincoln.
Tom defines a “Yobbit” in his first paragraph — and STILL gets one as the first comment…
any bit of biography that contains “No, he wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t perfect, …” can’t really be called hagiography.
I celebrate the Constitution of the United States of America, not the man who did his level best to destroy it, and looking at government today, largely succeeded. I do salute him for incidentally freeing the slaves — though it appears he was thrust kicking and screaming into that role by forces beyond his understanding.
Frdmftr: George Bush freed slaves?
“never could find the stomach (or parts lower) to actually go and fight anybody on a grand scale.” what bs. I can think of a lot reasons those generals declined to murder their countrymen. Only the hideous blood thirsty grant and sherman and the foreign soldiers lincoln hired could stomach such an evil war on civilians.
BTW you forgot to mention when lincoln came ashore to parade around his conquered lands, Richmond, he had the band play “DIXIE”. In our hate filled pc country today bands are not allowed to know or play Dixie anymore.
Why have you allowed our Freedoms to disappear………….
“…only a couple tried to defend, in roundabout terms, the South’s military defense of slavery.”
The military was not “defending slavery”. The Confederate military – which was not a trained military force, but mostly farmers and laborers – were defending their homeland by a much superior invading army. That is what Southerners are glorifying – their ancestors undeniable courage against unsurmountable odds.
But you of course Miss Danehy, could never understand courage and pride.
Freddie Ritch
http://www.RebelStore.com
“The military was not “defending slavery”.”
—this comment stills avoids the bottom-line-big-picture: no slavery – no Civil War…
good column and always timely. timely because so many whites, including apparently readers of the Weekly, decline to understand why there was a war. Whatever Lincoln’s view of slavery, once the South began to secede before he became President, there was only one constitutional question — could South Carolina or other strongholds of slavery leave the United States. 600,000 men died but this was a consequence of Southern intransigence, protecting that institution.
South Carolina was for a generation the leader in controlling and dominating black people. State law forbade the presence of non-slave black pesons. Out by sundown or face jail! This was conceded by the earlier Presidents as totally constitutional. Even to the extent that a free black person of British citizenship as a sailor on a ship that tied up at Charleston harbor had to be jailed for the duration of the ship’s stay in Charleston and upon being let out of jail the ship’s captain was required to pay for his room and board. Our federal government prior to Lincoln upheld such bigotry as beyond the powers of Washington to effect.
By the South making war on the federal constutition and losing, as a nation we got rid of slavery and eatablished a notion of national citizenship that doesn’t depend on bigotry at the state level. Most Americans are proud of this. Clearly not all the readers of the Weekly agree.
John Crow
retired professor of political science and retired immigration lawyer
Slavery was the key reason for the Civil War. President Lincoln ran on a campaign to stop the expansion of slavery in Western Territories, explicitly denounced threats of disunion as avowals of treason. To make a long story short Lincoln won, Southern states seceded, attacked a Federal Installation, Lincoln laid the smack down, and now we have to deal with morons that try to actually defend the South seceding.
Lincoln had the Constitutional right to suspend Habeas Corpus. Look at Section 9 of the US Constitution.
Lincoln was a hero to put into precedence that states could not create laws against a legal group of people in this country. We still had a long way to go with Jim Crow Laws, KKK, segregation, etc. However, finally our country citizens can actually strive for..
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”