SPECIAL EDITION-2: How Things Work – A Brief History of Reality
The Foundational Flaw of America: Part-2 – Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War
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Tuesday, April 26, 2022
“In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time.” – Abraham Lincoln
CONSIDERATION #28 – “The Foundational Flaw of America” Part-2: Lincoln and the Civil War (Based on excepts from “Being American: A Primer for All Parties & Persuasions”)
PREFACE
Welcome Everybody!
The founder’s inability to eliminate slavery in the actualization of the United States of America resulted in a moral fracture that could not be contained. If liberty was “good,” then slavery by necessity must be “evil.” There was no way to balance this incongruity. The wound of slavery left unattended by the original founders had festered and raged like a fever throughout the entire country turning states, families, and individuals against each other. “Four score and seven years” after the nation’s founding, the 16th president of the United States found himself dealing with the “wolf” that Jefferson had once written about.
CONSIDERATION #28: Abraham Lincoln & The Civil War
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
― Abraham Lincoln
As with the original founding fathers, Lincoln’s first concern was with maintaining the Union. As a lawyer, Lincoln had always identified with the Constitution. However, as time went on, he began to recognize and associate more with the humanity of the ideas found in the Declaration of Independence, and the essential rights promised to “all” men. Rights that had been completely denied to people of color in America. Emancipation transcended from being a political tool; becoming instead the vision he was compelled to manifest.
“Lincoln found himself the President of a broken Union. The crack in the foundation of America had finally split the nation apart…”
Like Washington, Lincoln was a President who understood and felt the weight of history on his Presidency. And like Washington, Lincoln rose to the occasion. After becoming the first President ever elected without a single vote from a “slave” state; the southern states seceded from the United States to form the Confederate States of America. Lincoln found himself the President of a broken Union. The crack in the foundation of America had finally split the nation apart; the Civil War had begun.
“America was in ruins physically, economically, and spiritually.”
Neither side expected or anticipated that the war would last so long or cost so much. In the most devastating war in United States history, over 600,000 Americans lost their lives. By the end of the war, the actual monetary cost was running about 3.5 million dollars a day. Much of the infrastructure in both the North and South, including railroad lines, was destroyed or damaged. America was in ruins physically, economically, and spiritually. The cost to the United States for its founders not dealing with the issue of slavery was catastrophic.
“Harking back to the original founders' intent for the nation, Lincoln delivered one of the shortest and most indelible speeches in American History…”
On the train ride to a small town in Pennsylvania to dedicate a battlefield cemetery where the bloodiest battle of the Civil War had just taken place, Lincoln reflected on the speech he was about to deliver and how inconsequential it seemed compared to the massive toll of the war in terms of human casualties. Harking back to the original founders' intent for the nation, Lincoln delivered one of the shortest and most indelible speeches in American History, the Gettysburg Address.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
― The Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863)
The complexities of the political, economic, military, social, and moral issues connected to the over two-hundred-year-old institution of slavery seemed impossible to navigate, much less negotiate. However, more and more, Lincoln began to understand that the founders’ inability to abolish slavery in the United States had led to the disaster that he was now facing; it was his responsibility to complete the task and fully implement liberty and equality in the United States. It was no longer enough to win the war for the sake of holding the Union together. He, like Washington, had come to know and understand that there could be no Union as long as it contained the abomination of slavery.
“On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation; officially declaring that freedom and liberty for all people in the United States was the fundamental principle for which the Union Army was fighting…”
Three years into the bloody war that had aged Lincoln far beyond his years, on January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation; officially declaring that freedom and liberty for all people in the United States was the fundamental principle for which the Union Army was fighting for. In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln considers the long suffering endured from the war to be a type of divine balance for allowing the sin of slavery into America.
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-men’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
Abraham Lincoln – Second Inaugural Address
Once the moral commitment to the abolishment of slavery was made, the task of winning the war and reuniting the Union continued. The war had taken its toll on Lincoln and the nation. After four years of Americans fighting against other Americans in over 50 major campaigns, the end finally came. On April 9, 1865, Southern General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the courthouse in Appomattox, Virginia. The Civil War was over.
“Lincoln began by personally leading the effort to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, officially outlawing and banning slavery in the United States.”
While the great burden of war had been lifted off of Lincoln’s shoulders, the legal implementation of rights for the more than four million newly emancipated Americans and the reconstruction and healing of the nation remained. Lincoln began by personally leading the effort to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, officially outlawing and banning slavery in the United States. This would repair the Constitutional crevice left by the original framers. Lincoln approved a Joint Resolution of Congress which was ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865. Now the healing and reunification of the nation could begin.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Abraham Lincoln – Second Inaugural Address
Lincoln did not want to punish the South. He wanted to find a way to bring them fully back into the Union. To end the Civil War meant to end the civil strife; retribution could not be the aim of reconstruction if healing was to take place. In addition, he believed African Americans should be given full equal rights including the right to vote; fully enfranchising them as American citizens. Lincoln held great hope that, with the fatal flaw of slavery now abolished in America and officially banned in the Constitution, the nation could now finally heal and become the America originally proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. This would be the legacy of his next term. The second war for independence had been won and the body and soul of the nation finally restored.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
― Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address – 1861
If Providence was the force behind Lincoln’s place in that specific timeline of American History, we may never know why he was taken before completing his vision of full unity and reconstruction. The vacuum of steadfast moral leadership left by Lincoln’s death would derail not only his plans for reconstruction in the South but delay the full implementation of civil rights for African Americans for another hundred years. However, with the war finally over, Lincoln was optimistic about the future.
Lincoln, for the first time in four years, could allow himself to be happy and even celebrate. A lover of the theater, the President and his wife decided to see a comedy, My American Cousin, playing at the Ford Theater. As the couple and friends watched the performance from the Presidential Box, a southern actor named John Wilkes Booth entered the box, snuck up behind the President, put a pistol to the back of his head, and pulled the trigger. Leaping from the box to the stage he yelled, “Sic semper tryannis!” or “thus always to tyrants” as he ran off the stage.
“Only six days after the unconditional surrender of General Robert E. Lee, and barely a month after his Second Inaugural Address, the 16th President of the United States of America was gone.”
President Abraham Lincoln died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head on April 15, 1865 at 7:22 a.m. Only six days after the unconditional surrender of General Robert E. Lee, and barely a month after his Second Inaugural Address, the 16th President of the United States of America was gone. Upon the doctor’s pronouncement of the President’s death, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton declared, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.
― Robert G. Ingersoll, 1885
POSTSCRIPT
Although keeping the Union together and finally ending the institution of slavery in America, Lincoln did not live to help implement the reconstruction of the “new” nation. The evil of slavery reconstituted itself as the evil of racism and bigotry. Although slavery was finally illegal in America, the oppression of segregation immediately took its place. Real Civil Rights for African Americans would take another century.
Next week Dr. Martin Luther King goes to Washington D.C. to cash a check for those still waiting to live the American Dream and prosper in the American Promise.
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