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Amid the turmoil concerning the status of the Civil War memorials, it is wise to study the towering figure of the war, Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was unquestionably a great man and a great president. His devotion to the Union in its hour of trial remains justly honored. His abhorrence of slavery helped to abolish the evil once and for all.
Equally important, Lincoln understood that worthy men and women can find themselves committed to unworthy causes. The war between the states was also a war between brothers.
As Lincoln said on March 4, 1865, in his second inaugural address: “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 lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
There was no mention here of bitterness or revenge, nor should there have been. No president has spoken finer words.
But the war was much longer and more tragic than it should have been. Admirers of the novel and film “Gone with the Wind” will recall an early scene in which Rhett Butler declares: “There isn’t a cannon factory in the South. All we have are cotton and slaves — and arrogance.”
This was only a slight exaggeration. At the first clash of arms in 1861, the North had, in effect, 80 percent of the nation’s population and 85 percent of its industrial might.
At its creation, moreover, the Confederacy lacked an established army and navy.
Why, then, was the war so belabored? The reasons were two: Southern valor and Northern tactical ineptitude.
The war could have been ended with dispatch at either the Battle of Antietam in 1862 or the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. But on both occasions, the Union commanders, George McClellan and George Meade, respectively, failed to pursue the faltering Southern armies.
Lincoln protested strongly, but too late.
For that matter, Ulysses S. Grant eventually defeated Robert E. Lee only by sheer weight of numbers. In a more balanced confrontation, the beloved “Marse Robert” probably would have prevailed.
William T. Sherman’s “march” through Georgia, meanwhile, was so wantonly destructive as to scar Southern souls for generations. “War is hell,” but Sherman made it more so.
The cruelty of the war hurt Lincoln terribly. Dusk found him at the War Department in silent anguish, scrutinizing the thousands upon thousands of names on casualty lists.
Dawn saw him pacing the echoing halls of the White House alone.
At the end of the war in 1865, just days before Lincoln’s assassination, the president hosted the Marine Corps band in the nation’s capital. Asked to select the first song for the celebration, the Great Emancipator replied: “Play ‘Dixie.’’’
Joseph Tipler
Centralia
