Ask the kids today what's wrong with our country, what's the one big thing they'd change about it, and you're likely to get some sort of response about how divided we are these days. Chillen, gather 'round, and let us tell you about divided. And how a nation can be united again, if the right leader appears at the right moment. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of hateful speech and angrier attitudes may speedily pass away.
What we're seeing today isn't unimportant--the protests in the streets, the scoldings on social media, the man in the White House who's gone against tradition, history, and decorum so often in his administration's early days. But there are too many checks and balances on the new president for him to make the worst nightmares of his critics come true. And enough good people in Congress (and in a surprisingly fantastic Cabinet) to ensure enough of this president's promises come true to please his supporters. Or, as somebody once said, this, too, shall pass.
Once upon a time, this, too--that is, the continuation of the nation--was doubtful to pass. The nation was torn in two circa 1861-1865. And those who'd tear the Union apart were winning. Or at least drawing things out enough to discourage many on the other side. (Remember, during the Vietnam War, the enemy didn't win many battles. He just made things so difficult and bloody for the United States that people on these shores finally decided the contest wasn't worth it.)
No matter what we've heard from certain unreconstructed types over the years, yes, the American Civil War, or just The War as it's known in these latitudes, was all about slavery. All one need do is read the correspondence of those who were fighting in it. Or read the declarations of each state in the Confederacy as they voted, one by one, to leave the Union. Those secession papers are so much more interesting, reliable and honest than some of the books going around today, which create yet another echo chamber as the writers quote each other. And give each other some sort of paper trail showing how economics and only economics caused The War. Yes, different regions of the country had different economies. Because one was based on slavery, a peculiar institution as American as apple pie, motherhood and violence.
Then the most unlikely of politicians showed up. And finally won an election. It was a big one, however--the presidential election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln would be forgiven thinking back on all the elections he'd lost over the years the night before his inauguration. Sometimes the voters get it right.
But in all likelihood Abraham Lincoln didn't have time to think back much. The union was falling apart. His predecessor was letting it happen. Barely a month in office, the South decided to make a glorious, historic and idiotic decision: Fire on Fort Sumter.
The man whose birthday we celebrate today wasn't always as popular as he is now. Even before he took office, half the country wouldn't have him. The congressmen who mentioned him in debates--that is, those congressmen who stayed in the Union--treated him with disdain. The public prints would make you, Gentle Reader, blush if those of us in the modern media dared get even close. ("Filthy story teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land pirate."--Harper's Weekly magazine.)
Worse, his generals wouldn't fight. He courted them, reassigned them, waited on them, pushed them, praised them, and eventually went through them. ("If McClellan is not using the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.")
Eventually Lincoln found his Grant. But years would go by first. Bloody years. And months would go by with no good news. And the press would be filled with speculation of who'd replace him on the next presidential ballot. For surely Americans would never make this mistake again. This, this . . . Lincoln mistake.
Why would any politician in that era take a line opposing slavery? That noise you hear is the unreconstructed types again, picking (and choosing) a famous quote of Mr. Lincoln that he would have been happy to keep the Union alive with slavery, or with slavery here and there. And he no doubt meant it as the shells started flying and the reports of the dead and wounded came in. But there's no doubt that Abraham Lincoln was anti-slavery from his early years. Read the (mostly accurate) depictions of the Lincoln-Douglas debates when Honest Abe ran for United States Senate from Illinois. The press at the time might have massaged some of the debates, depending on which press was printing. But the quotes are largely the same no matter who was doing the reporting.
There's also the story of young Abraham hitching a ride on a working flatboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans. One of his friends who went with him on that trip would record their first visit to a slave auction in 1828. For the rest of his life, Allen Gentry would remember the 19-year-old Lincoln's reaction to the sight. The horror of it, the sacrilege of it, the repudiation of our common human dignity, the image of God on the auction block . . .
Mr. Gentry would recall looking down at Lincoln's hands and seeing that he "doubled his fists tightly; his knuckles went white." First the burly black field hands were auctioned off at a good price, and then came the real horror. "When the sale of 'fancy girls' began," Mr. Gentry remembered, young Lincoln was "unable to stand it any longer," and he muttered to his friend, "Allen, that's a disgrace. If I ever get a lick at that thing I'll hit it hard."
His chance would be the country's decades later. And with firmness in the right that God gave him to see the right, he strived to finish slavery. Along with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen.
But somebody had to lead us.
That somebody was named Lincoln, chillen. When the nation really was in crisis.
Editorial on 02/12/2017