MD
Department Patriotic Instructors Message for March 2011
Today
is March 4th and one hundred fifty years ago today that Abraham Lincoln took
the oath as the 16th President of the United States. In his epic biography of Lincoln, historian
Carl Sandburg explains the low opinion southern politicians had of Lincoln. Sandburg uses Texas Senator Louis Wigfal[1]
as his orator saying that on March 2nd,
in the Senate, Wigfal made the following statement about Lincoln "under the apprehension that, on Monday next, at the precise hour of
twelve, the aforesaid Abraham is to
swallow the Chicago platform and go for peace.
I do not know how this is. I rather
suspect it is true. I do not think that
a man who disguises himself in a soldiers cloak and a scotch cap and makes his
entree between day and day, into the capital of the country he is going to
govern, I hardly think he is going to look war sternly in the face . . .
"[2]
How wrong they were to hold Lincoln in such contempt, these men of the south
who thought him ill prepared, uneducated,
inexperienced, and weak. In retrospect we can see that many people were
unsure and unaware of Lincoln's immense and innate leadership qualities. Little was expected from the man of the west. Even among his supporters doubt lingered. Even Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts,
Sandburg says "could not get rid of his misgivings as to how this
seemingly untutored child of nature [Lincoln] would master the tremendous task
before him."[3]
How
then did Lincoln overcome the doubts and convince the southern gentlemen that
they were wrong about his determination to preserve the Union? Well he simply gave a speech, which was
written in well reasoned prose but presented
with emotion. Lincoln's first inaugural
was a triumph of intellect and language, which explained why he would go to war
if it were just and unavoidable.
Lincoln' concluded the 1st Inaugural with the following statement:
"My
countrymen, one and all, think clearly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking
time. If there be an object to hurry any
of you in hot has to a step which you would never take deliberately, that
object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated
by it. Such of you as are now
dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive
point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will
have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are
dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single
reason for precipitate action . . . . In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being
yourselves the aggressors. You have no
oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I have the solemn
one to "preserve, protect and defend it."[4]
Clearly
Lincoln was not calling for war with the south, he proposed no "war of
northern aggression." Rather Lincoln called upon the people of the south
to use reason and tradition to guide their decisions, while reminding the south
that his oath of office, taken that very day, required him to take action to preserve the sanctity of the Union. A model of conservative values; Lincoln
became our nations strength, moral compass and possibly greatest political
leader of all time
[1]
Wigfall was
among a group of leading secessionist known as Fire-Eaters, advocating the
preservation and expansion of an aristocratic agricultural society based on
slave labor. He briefly served as a Confederate Brigadier General of the Texas
Brigade at the outset of the American Civil War before taking his seat in the
Confederate Senate.
[2]
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years - I, Carl Sandburg, Vol. 3, Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, 1944 p. 115
[3]
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years - I, Carl Sandburg, Vol. 3, Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, 1944 p. 114
[4]
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years - I, Carl Sandburg, Vol. 3, Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, 1944 p. 133-135
Written by Mark R. Day, March 2011, Copyright by Mark R. Day 1 March 2011, all rights reserved
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