Many will recognize these words from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. He gave the address while consecrating a cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, following the victory of the Army of The Potomac in the battle that was fought there four months earlier. He was speaking of the soldiers who had died in that battle, and offered the wish that they shall not have died in vain.
The speech was not well thought of at the time, but has since become regarded as one of the finest in our history. The last line asked that, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
A study of history of this country, or any country for that matter, often begins with the battles that were fought, the issues that those battles decided, and the leaders who held power and directed the country and forces through those battles. My historical education began no differently. The causes of those wars are always addressed, though often superficially, as the final exam will mostly be on the who, what, where, when, and how of the events. Why is often a deeper question. One that can take as much study as all the rest. It is graduate level stuff, or at least for the pursuit of history majors.
I don’t pretend to be that history major, or dare say a professor to teach these histories; but I do like that dive into the deep end of the pool. I do want to understand what lay behind the decisions that our predecessors made.
When I read those beautiful words of President Lincoln’s I wonder what the motivations were for those men who did give their last full measure.
Today we see the American Civil War as a fight to end slavery, at least from northern historical perspectives. But if you asked Lincoln what it was about, he’d have said first, second, and third that it was preserving the Union.
To Lincoln the Civil War was not fought between the USA and the CSA. It was fought within the USA, and it was started by 11 states of that union entering open rebellion. And the existence of the Confederacy as a nation was in the minds of only those who were in rebellion. They were always part of the United States in Lincoln’s mind. And the point of fighting was to keep it that way.
We know for certain that the primary cause of that rebellion was slavery. That “peculiar institution,” as it was called, and the threat to it that the southern slaveholding states perceived with the political trend across the country, and in particular the election in 1860 of Lincoln to the Presidency.
Lincoln was only the second Presidential candidate for the then new Republican Party. The first being Colonel John C. Fremont four years earlier.
I’ve gone more into detail in other writings, but the short of it is that the Republican Party was formed by abolitionist members of the Whig party. The core principle of the Republican party was the abolition of slavery. And though Lincoln never called for an end to slavery during his campaign, (and even famously said he would keep slavery intact if that would save the Union,) it was the this basic ideal that they held which inspired the slave states to attempt to secede and form their own country where slavery would be permanent.
Later in the 19th century, “lost cause” histories were written framing the civil war as having been fought over states rights, and often referring to it as “the war of northern aggression.” But these were not true. A clear reading of the proclamations, letters, and speeches of the leaders of those same southern states, which were made prior to and at the time they attempted secession, made it clear that it was the right to own slaves that was at the heart of this decision. They saw the black man as beneath the white man, both in intellect and character, and that it was God’s will that they remain in a condition of such servitude.
And don’t be misled into believing that all in the north were abolitionists. This is not true, though it is true that abolition was stronger in the free states than it was in the slave states, so long as you don’t count the voices of those who were so enslaved.
And, as it is today, the north had its share of racists. Even many who supported abolition maintained that while the “negro” should be free from bondage, he would never be the equal to the white man.
But when the call to arms came, what motivated the people to come forward and put their lives on the line? Slavery was certainly a motivating cause, but more because of the long term limitations it placed on the nation than any immediate threat. As mentioned earlier, Lincoln was saving the Union, and the issue of freeing slaves and ending slavery came years into that great conflict. Clearly for both north and south, patriotism to one’s own state was highly motivating. But was that alone enough for this fight?
In the slave south, most of the men called forth to come under arms did not even own slaves. And in the north, large numbers didn’t even object to the institution. (Here as an aside I’ll mention that in reading recently about a popular early choral ensemble, The Hutchinson Family Singers, I read that when they performed for Union soldiers during the war, many of those men complained about the abolitionist songs that the group had become famous for.)
It is easy (but wrong) to paint with a large brush the motivation for all participants in war. Surely there were many who didn’t wish to fight at all, but who were called up and ordered to do so. The draft has been used many times in our history, and though some men served because they were compelled to, the vast majority volunteered. There were then, as we saw in later wars, those who avoided being drafted. Whether it was by paying someone else to go in their stead, by claiming some defect that would prohibit service, or by fleeing outright to some territory out of the reach of conscription by authority. But broadly speaking, most people would rather obey the law and take their chances in the field, then brand themselves an outlaw or a coward.
And surely there were those who were motivated by the ideals of the moment. Whether it be the scion of the southern plantation owner defending his establishment, or the northern abolitionist fighting for the freedom of the negro.
But at the core there was the idea of defending the cause of the people with whom you belonged. They stood with their neighbors, and behind the leaders of their states. And they adopted the hatred of the enemy. The enemy who sought to destroy something they held dear.
This was true for those who donned the blue, and marched in regiments from New York and Pennsylvania, Maine and Massechusettes, Illinois and Indiana, Minnesota and “Thank God for” Michigan. The men who left farms and factories in all northern states to take up arms, it was the union they were defending, whether they thought so at the start, whether they had higher ideals or not, or whether they volunteered or were drafted.
And it was right and good that Lincoln addressed their sacrifice so eloquently in this speech. But of course he did. In his letters and papers, as well as those of others who interacted with him, Lincoln was deeply moved and hurt by the great loss of life. Like it was for Grant, it was this which motivated him to push to win and end this war quickly. Lincoln understood death, and he understood the loss those men were to their families and community.
When we ask if they died in vain, it is good to look at what we have, and see what might have been had we lost. Some students of this world tell us that slavery would eventually end on its own had we not fought that war. But how many more generations would suffer in bondage waiting for people to change their minds? Look at how many who walk our streets today still hold the belief of racial superiority? How many rationalize the slavery of our history as beneficial and necessary? What might be the state of things today and the effect on the world as a whole had the secession of the southern states succeeded?
The greatness that came to this continent in keeping the union had a profound effect on the world in the decades since. Whether it was breaking the stalemate of the Great War, or standing up to fascism during the second World War that followed a generation later; it is hard to imagine what might have been the course we traveled had we been split into two all those years ago. For the last three-quarters of a century, America has been at the heart of the modern world. Holding together the ideals of liberty and democracy in the face of renewed authoritarianism that spreads on other continents.
We haven’t always acted perfectly. There have been too many times where the monied interests held too much influence on our national agenda. Too many times when corrupt politicians lined their own pockets and allowed the power to be concentrated in the hands of the mighty and wealthy. Yes, we’ve made mistakes. But we have a system that can fix those mistakes. The founders of this nation put their trust in the people. And if the people exercise their power, we can refocus our commitment to the ideals we hold. Consent of the governed. Government of the people. Democratically chosen representation.
We had a scare at the beginning of 2021 and almost lost what we had. The details are slowly coming out, and I look forward to the public hearings that our publicly elected Congress will hold in the coming months. Hearings that will paint for us in grave detail the diabolical effort that was made to erase the public will and replace our majority government with an autocracy, and how close it came to succeeding.
But understand that had that coup worked, the days of choosing who leads us would be over. Democracy would be replaced with autocracy. It would become the norm to claim victory and use violence or the threat of it to compel compliance or suppress democracy.
In countries like Russia, like Hungary, and others, democracy is notional; with real opposition to the entrenched power being marginalized, election outcomes decided in advance by the rulers, and increasingly restricted speech imposed on the people. The ability to redress grievances and replace those governments with ones that better represent the will of the people cannot be decided at the polling stations. The power in those countries have been taken away from the people. And some say the people gave it up because they liked what the leaders were doing. They now see it is too late to change their minds. If they try to take it back, they’ll quickly see that it would have been easier to not let it get away at first.
And some here in America like the former President and would have accepted him remaining President had he managed to succeed in his plan to overthrow our democracy.
There are times in the history of the world where the ends may well have justified the means. I won’t try to pick any now. But the idea that destruction of the basic democratic framework of our Republic could somehow be justified because a vocal and militarized minority didn’t like the will of the majority is not such a moment.
The Union.
Union is all of us voicing our desires, and accepting that the majority gets choices. Our governing document is the Constitution, which establishes who holds power, and how that power is applied. It makes clear that the majority may not deny the rights of the minority. They pick who leads, and those who lead follow the rules and laws so established.
The founders of this nation were themselves the people of this nation. They trusted that the majority could collectively make good choices.
But mostly they recognized that the tendency of power is to concentrate. And those who wish to hold that concentrated power become corrupted by it. It is, they found, in the best interest of the people for power to be spread out among the masses, so that a minority may not subject the people to their will. This entire American experiment could be summarized as an effort to spread power away from the corruption of concentration. Benjamin Franklin famously responded to a question about what he and the others had wrought with the line, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
And they knew that keeping it would require work, and that work would need to be done by the whole of the people. Democracy is a participatory undertaking. It won’t work with the people watching from the sidelines.
And those who would work against democracy, those who would seek to concentrate the power into their own hands will not quit trying. This isn’t a movie where the bad guy is vanquished once and forever. There will always be new actors in that role. There will always be those whose egos drive them to the belief that they and theirs are the only ones who can direct the country, and that the voices of the majority are misguided and should be marginalized or ignored. They follow the lessons learned over the millennia. Divide and conquer.
So they gain political power by driving a wedge between the people. By declaring that some of the people are the enemy of the others. That their faction will be subjugated by the others if they don’t fight. They seek to divide the people into factions, left-right, old-young, white-black, nativist-immigrant; and they use cunning to divide even those who have broad agreement by creating conflicts over abortion, healthcare, guns, gender, sexual orientation and more.
We are reaching Memorial Day here in the United States of America. It is a day for parades and speeches, and marks the unofficial start of summer. The weekend never goes by without reminders of whom we memorialize, and the admonishments of veterans like myself, that this day is not about us, but about those who died defending this nation and the freedoms we cherish. Veterans have our own day later in the year. The end of May is for the honored dead.
They were all fighting for the nation, whether they were all equally motivated by one ideal or the other, or whether they truly understood the risks in front of them. Ultimately it is the Union for which they fought.
We need to renew our fight for union. For unity to the cause of our nation. We need to reaffirm our love of freedom, of equality, of that government of, by, and for The People. If we fail to do so, and we allow a minority to wield authority over us; then it will be that all of those we honor today shall have died in vain, and their last full measure of devotion will have been wasted.