Is Lincoln to blame for America’s empire?

Some observers see Lincoln’s presidency and the outcome of the Civil War as the point when America got off-kilter, sort of like a national equivalent to the Fall of Man.  At some point between 1860 and 1865, so this line of thinking goes, the country went off the rails and abandoned the legacy of the Revolution and the Constitution, leaving us with the centralized, interventionist, and industrial nation in which we now live.

There’s a nugget of truth to all this, but it’s hidden among a lot of overstatement and moralization.  The Civil War did contribute to the creation of a stronger and more vigorous central government, Lincoln’s use of presidential authority was broader than many of his predecessors, and the Union’s victory did accelerate the creation of a more consolidated and economically modern America.  At the same time, though, you can’t attribute America’s transformation entirely to the Civil War or to Lincoln’s presidency.  The war was a critical step down that road, but it wasn’t the only one—and the road itself was circuitous, since the exertion of federal authority has expanded and contracted at various times between 1865 and today.  Lincoln did a great many consequential things, but he didn’t sucker punch the whole country into the modern age single-handedly.

Abraham Lincoln portrait by William F. Cogswell, 1869 (The White House Historical Association via Wikimedia Commons)

In an interesting and provocative essay, Thomas DiLorenzo takes this notion of the Lincoln presidency as something akin to America’s moment of original sin and applies it to foreign policy.  He argues that Lincoln abandoned the Founders’ desire for neutrality and friendly commerce in favor of “imperialist fantasies about perfecting the entire planet as the bedrock of American foreign policy ideas.”  Lincoln, he states, believed that it was incumbent upon Americans to impose democratic ideals on other countries, and so our subsequent foreign entanglements and interventions follow from this misguided conviction.

DiLorenzo thus uses an interpretation of the past to critique the present.  As far as his criticism of American interventionism goes, I’m inclined to agree with him, at least to a considerable extent.  What I don’t agree with is his diagnosis of the historical origins of the problem.  Like the larger concept of which it’s a part—the notion that the Civil War is the point at which the country somehow went wrong—I think his argument contains a kernel of historic truth hidden in a matrix of serious oversimplification.  DiLorenzo makes Lincoln out to be a far more influential figure than he actually was.

He’s certainly correct that Lincoln believed the U.S., as an experiment in popular government, had an important role to play in the world.  Indeed, that’s one reason why he took secession so seriously.  If the nation collapsed in civil warfare, he thought, then the whole notion of a nation governed by the people themselves was in doubt.  Hence his argument at Gettysburg that America was a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to a proposition of equality, and that the war was a contest to determine whether any such nation could survive.  If the Union prevailed, self-government would be vindicated and would have the opportunity to take root elsewhere.

But I don’t think DiLorenzo is accurate in equating Lincoln’s brand of American exceptionalism with a zealous support of foreign intervention.  Ever since the Revolution—since earlier than that, actually, if one takes the Puritans into account—Americans have believed they could instruct the world, but not all of them have believed they must do so by force.  I don’t really see any reason to assume that Lincoln’s American exceptionalism was necessarily of the militant kind or to lay the blame for America’s status as a global policeman at his feet.  True, the interventionist and expansionist U.S. of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries probably wouldn’t have taken the form it did if it weren’t for the creation of a consolidated and industrial nation with a vigorous government, which the Civil War made possible.  But that’s not to say that it wouldn’t have become an interventionist and expansionist country at all.  The agrarian, slave-based economic interest that was so influential in antebellum America was something of an imperialist engine in its own right, spurring on conflict with Mexico and sparking filibustering expeditions in other parts of Latin America.  Indeed, well before the Civil War, America had been practicing a form of internal imperialism with regard to the Indians.  It’s therefore entirely possible that an America without a Lincoln presidency or a Civil War might have become an interventionist world power anyway, albeit an interventionist power of a different kind.

I have no idea how Lincoln would feel about modern America’s willingness to spend blood and treasure policing the world.  Maybe he’d endorse the extension of American ideals and institutions to foreign countries by force of arms, at least under some circumstances.  Or maybe not; after all, he was a vocal critic of America’s war with Mexico in the 1840′s.  Whatever the case, I think he’d be quite surprised that anyone would draw a direct line between his readiness to use force to suppress what he considered an internal rebellion and the deployment of American forces across the globe a century and a half later.

Paranormal investigators add gravity, scholarly rigor to Antietam commemoration

Staff rides and ranger walks are great, but there’s just no substitute for the insight of an experienced ghost hunter:

Among the stories told was one about a re-enactor who was re-enacting a battle at one point and thought he had been “killed” by another re-enactor. However, after the battle was over, nobody else saw the “killing” re-enactor, and Riley implied it was the spirit of an actual dead soldier who took part in the battle re-enactment, thinking it was real.

A subsequent investigation by four adolescents and their dog revealed that the “spirit” was actually a local con man in disguise.  When reached for comment, the malefactor stated, “I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!”

Two anniversaries

Today wasn’t just the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam; it was also the 225th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.  Wonder if all the guys who labored over that piece of parchment had any idea how expensive it would turn out to be.

 

The pale horse

Not long ago I screened a copy of Death and the Civil War, which premieres on PBS Tuesday, Sept. 18.  Based largely on Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering, the show explores the implications of the tremendous loss of life (to the tune of over 700,000 dead) during the costliest war Americans have ever fought on their own soil.

One of the most salient facts about this bloodshed was the degree to which the country was unprepared to deal with it.  Nineteenth-century Americans had particular notions about what constituted a “good death,” but the war forced men to come to terms with the prospect of a sudden, horrific, and ignominious end to their lives.  Neither of the two contending governments were adequately prepared for the number of losses either, lacking standardized policies or an infrastructure to handle the identification, removal, and burial of the corpses.  Nor was there a systematic effort to ensure the provision of prompt and accurate information about their fate to loved ones back home.  This absence of a comprehensive official effort in the war’s early days forced private organizations and individuals to fill these roles, seeing to the burial of dead comrades and writing letters to their relatives.

Confederate dead collected for burial after Antietam. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Call number LC-B811- 557)

There was improvisation and change on many levels.  On an immediate and practical one, embalming grew in popularity to answer the desires of families to have soldiers’ bodies shipped home for burial.  The horrific death toll exacted by the war’s larger battles prompted the creation of national cemeteries.  Congress began authorizing the acquisition of land for burials near major battlefields in 1862, but with the establishment of a national burial ground at Gettysburg the following year, the issue of soldiers’ internment became a matter of civic responsibility and public sentiment.

In fact, the growing awareness that the public owed something to the war dead and their families contributed to important changes in conceptions of the proper scope of federal activity.  In some cases it took the advocacy of private individuals to accomplish this; after losing his son to the war, Henry Bowditch called for the creation of a proper ambulance service, and Clara Barton worked to locate information on the missing at the request of distraught families while advocating for greater government attention to the dead and their loved ones.  This growing sense of national obligation, along with a fear that Union graves would be neglected or desecrated by hostile Southerners, led Montgomery Meigs to call for a comprehensive survey of U.S. war burials, many of which had been haphazard affairs conducted by comrades as circumstances permitted.  Official requests for information on graves brought forth a deluge of written testimony, and surveyors eventually located and documented thousands of Union interments across the former Confederacy.  The national government oversaw the relocation of over 300,000 of these bodies to national cemeteries, one of the largest federal programs undertaken up to that time.  The war had changed the relationship between the government and its soldiers and citizens as the scale of bloodshed led to a developing notion of a debt owed by the nation to those who gave their lives for it.

This official effort did not encompass Confederate dead; instead, Southern women responded to federal neglect of their soldiers’ graves by organizing their own volunteer efforts.  They tended to the graveyards of Rebel soldiers in Richmond and saw to the repatriation of Southern bodies to their native soil.  Both North and South developed postwar traditions to perpetuate this sense of obligation to the war dead, but there was thus a sectional difference in the level of government aid available in seeing to the disposition of bodies.

Death and the Civil War covers additional topics not discussed in this review, such as the manner in which Lincoln gave meaning to the war’s dead in his dedication speech at Gettysburg, the loss of life in contraband camps, and Alexander Gardner’s photographic exhibition of battlefield casualties.  (The photos themselves are utilized to chilling effect throughout the program.)  It’s a documentary that manages to be comprehensive and intimate at the same time, conveying something of the scale of death created by the war while offering glimpses of the ways individual Americans lived out the experience in their own words.  By making connections between the battlefield and the home front and by exploring the war’s impact on religion, race, and memory, it brings some of the questions of the new military history to public attention.  It’s both informative and sobering, offering us an utterly unromanticized look at a war which resolved important issues at the heart of American history, but only at a fearsome cost.  It’s well worth your time, so tune in Tuesday night if you get the chance.

NPS battlefield report is ready for your comments

The report, which examines Civil War battlefield preservation over the past twenty years and offers some recommendations for the future, went online today at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/battlefields.  The NPS will be taking comments until October 12, so take a look and sound off.

Confederate descendants carry on the work of their forefathers

…by seceding from their SCV camp.

It seems some members of Florida’s General Jubal A. Early Camp No. 556 (of ginormous Confederate flag fame) wanted to devote more of their efforts to historic preservation and education.  Their compatriots preferred to focus on charitable work and PR, so twelve of the historically minded gents accordingly took their leave and formed a new camp, named for Judah P. Benjamin.

When members of a Civil War heritage group can’t persuade fellow members to engage in Civil War heritage activities, I think you’ve got a case for secession that even the most radical of nineteenth-century Republicans would support.

The ultimate Gettysburg souvenir

The original, honest-to-goodness Electric Map is up for grabs at a government auction site (with a tip of the hat to Brooks Simpson).

Need the perfect gift for that Civil War buff who has everything? Look no more. He’ll be the envy of all his fellow CWRT members. Oh, Bob, I heard your kids bought you another Kunstler print. Here, step into the living room for a minute and I’ll show you what the wife picked up for my birthday.

But wait, there’s more! During the holiday season, the Electric Map doubles as a festive lawn decoration! With a simple bulb reconfiguration, Longstreet’s July 2 attack on the Union left transforms into two elves dancing atop the words JOY TO THE WORLD.

All joking aside, think about this for a minute. On several occasions we’ve noted how an individual’s personal memories sometimes intersect with collective historical memory. When you’ve been visiting a site for many years and it’s become the locus for many fond recollections, you come to regard it as much for its personal nostalgic value as for its objective historical significance.

Now, consider how the Disney parks cater to hardcore fans. Some Disney rides stay in operation for decades, acquire enthusiastic followings, and become venerable institutions in their own right. A few years ago, the folks at the Mouse introduced a line of commemorative pins which contain tiny pieces of the actual attractions themselves, removed during refurbishment or when a ride is dismantled. They’re like little pop culture reliquaries.

Thus Disney enthusiasts get to have a tangible connection to something that’s dear to them, and the parks make a little money. Maybe historic sites are missing out on the nostalgic market. The uproar over the Electric Map and the Cyclorama building indicate that we’re a pretty sentimental bunch.

Reputations and rankings

A few days ago Tom Clemens stuck up for George McClellan during a Department of Defense lecture.  Little Mac’s reputation, he argued, has suffered unfairly due to contemporary political meddling, unclear orders, and the towering stature of the men he opposed.  The 150th anniversary of Antietam seems like a good opportunity for public historians and popular writers to offer people a more positive portrait of McClellan than they’ve been accustomed to, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

On a much weightier note, online forum users are discussing the only presidential ranking method that really counts: Which chief executive would prevail in a mass free-for-all knife fight?  Jackson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt are the obvious odds-on favorites.  On the other hand, Washington was 6’2″, ripped, and long-limbed.  I think he’d hold his own with the best of ‘em.

A dozen Civil War sites

CNN Travel lists twelve top destinations for Civil War buffs.  Lists of this sort make for great debate fodder.  I’m actually pretty satisfied with these choices, except I’d be tempted to replace Mobile Bay with Ft. Sumter.  If you consider Springfield a Civil War destination with all of its Lincoln attractions, then you could probably throw that one in, too.

What we really need is a list of the top Rev War spots.  The tricky part would be deciding what constitutes a “location.”  Does the Philly area get one slot on the list, or do you separate Independence National Historical Park and Valley Forge?  How about Williamsburg and Yorktown?  And what in the world are we going to do about Boston?

If there’s one thing we don’t need near Manassas

…it’s more highways.