The Other End of the Telescope

"I never knew that" she said

"What?"

"Abe Lincoln. Turns out he wasn't the great guy everybody makes him out to be."

Now I've had some doubts for some time about Lincoln, but my wife isn't much of a history buff, so it was interesting to hear her bring it up. I decided to poke around a little more.

I went to Amazon and found "The Real Lincoln" Wow! The reviews were either highly flattering or outright rants against the author and material. This much emotion can either be a sign of contrarian goodness, or wack-a-doodle pandering to the fringe element -- or both.

So I did a bit more research on the reviews, found nothing I considered substantially damning, and downloaded the book to my Kindle.

We all know the narrative around Abe Lincoln: In the early United States, the south had slavery. The north did not. Over time the differences between the two led to a fight. Lincoln, who campaigned his whole life to free slaves, finally was able to abolish slavery in the states and to save the Union -- at a horrible cost in lives. Lincoln freed the slaves with his famous Emancipation Proclamation. His Gettysburg Address laid the groundwork for why the north fought. After the war, the treasonous Southerners, who hated the slaves, did all they could to harass blacks, eventually forming the KKK.

In addition, as I've been hearing from various friends on the internet, to say anything good about the South is just about as good as wearing a KKK robe and burning a cross in your front yard -- we all know what you mean. It's code for racism. The South means slavery, hatred, and oppression. The only thing the South is good for now is a rallying point for poor, religious white trash. The day that every symbol of the South is removed from the country can't come too soon. Southerners were the Nazis of the late 19th century.

I overstate for effect, but only a bit.

To a contrarian like me, these types of statements are like a red cape to an angry bull. I just have to keep poking around. There's lots of smoke here (highly-charged emotions that things can only be told one way), but is there a fire? Is there some bit of interesting truth in here?

Trying to ditch the rhetorical baggage, there were several questions I have always had about Abe and the American Civil War:

• Why did most Southerners, who didn't own slaves, fight? Were they stupid? Manipulated by the rich upper class? Were they so afraid of slave freedom that they would have rather fought than let the slaves go?
• Lincoln abandoned all of the federal forts in the South except for two: one in Florida and Fort Sumter. Why not just abandon those as well? Was he planning on abandoning the last two? Did he announce this policy? What was the big deal about Fort Sumter, anyway? Why did the South Carolinians fire on it?
• Why did it take a war to get rid of slavery, anyway? Every other country on the planet got rid of slavery peacefully. Why we did need so much violence here?
• What was Lincoln's plan for the time after the war? I know he told Grant to "go easy" on Lee when he caught him, and he was not in favor of war trials and executions. Did he expect to use the military to occupy the south for more than a decade? What was the master plan?
• Did the southerners get to vote during the presidential election during the Civil War? Seems like a silly question, but if they were states in rebellion, and not another country, then the citizens of those states could vote, no?
• How did we end up with West Virginia, anyway? If the state of Virginia was split by war, shouldn't we reunite it after the war ended, like most places do?
• Why did we start building an intercontinental railroad in the middle of a Civil War? Seems like a weird time to undertake such a project, what with all those folks dying and all.
• All the states just didn't up and leave at once, right? So who left first, and why did some states stay in the union and others leave?
• For some reason, the U.S. only has two parties, and the last time we got a new political party was around the time of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln. What's up with that? What did it take to start a new party, and how did Lincoln do it when others failed?
• I've heard the phrase "Sherman's March to the Sea", which I take to be very bad thing. Of the Southerners burning Chambersburg. Were there laws of war in effect in 1860? Did either side follow them? Where did Lincoln stand on burning homes and attacking civilians?
• What is the argument in the Gettyburg Address, anyway? I've read it, and it's a wonderful piece of poetry. But what the heck does it mean?
• (This one has bugged me for 20 years or more) As you go back in time towards the early 1900s, people were extremely sympathetic towards the South. Remember the Hollywood movie "The Undefeated" Rock Hudson plays a sympathetic Souther war hero. "Gone With the Wind"? I could go on, but the closer you get to the actual people who either fought in the war or had parents/grandparents who fought in it, the more kind the feelings towards the South. Why is that? Was it nostalgia? Or did they know something we've forgotten?

I got the book, and I had to force myself to read it. Not because it's poorly written: it was very interesting and readable. Not because it was a horrible vitriolic screed: I found it a bit of a rant, but solidly based on facts. Everything that I chased down was true. Not even because it was one-sided: you don't expect to pick up a book called "The Real Lincoln" without expecting a harsh, scathing criticism.

I found it hard to read because it went against the grain of so many things I had learned in school and society. I know nothing about the author, but he didn't seem like a crazy person. Emotional, perhaps. Many times he started with facts and narratives and then sort of evolved into a tirade. He overstated and exaggerated, as one would do in a heated argument. But he did not lie. You could almost see him, red-faced, waving his arms around.

People getting this emotional? About something that happened what? 150 years ago? it just gets better and better.

If you have ever wanted to sit down with an intellectual person from the South around 1870, have a couple of beers and talk about the Civil War, this is your chance. Even filtering out the author's biases, I found this to be one of the most eye-opening books I have read in years. I could feel his passion for the topic. I find that people who have passion, even if you do not believe in what they are saying, make you more passionate as well.

I'm not going to get into what I learned or why I have changed some opinions and deepened others. I can't do these topics justice, and it would only invite needless debate. Read the book yourself. Form your own opinions.

There was something very important that happened to me reading this book: the Civil War went from some kind of abstract concept -- perhaps about state's rights or slavery or something -- and became something that I really felt. Now I know why Lee, when asked at the beginning of the war, aren't you a patriot? Don't you want to stay with the Union? said "I wish to live under no other government, and there is no sacrifice I am not ready to make for the preservation of the Union save that of honour. If a disruption takes place, I shall go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native state, and save in her defense there will be one soldier less in the world than now"

I love you guys but please don't show up in Virgina or I'll kill as many of you as I can? What kind of rebellious attitude is that?

Now that I've read the book, I know what the "American Bastille" was, why there were riots during the war, how the first Income Tax got passed, what the "American System" was, how the South viewed reconstruction -- all kinds of little things I must have missed in history class. I also know much more about the answers to my questions mentioned above.

More importantly, I am beginning to know the feelings of those who fought. They just aren't cardboard cutouts appearing in some comic book. The southerners weren't villains with funny hats -- they were just like us: same language, same history, same values (slavery excepted, of course), same culture, same literature and art. This was the first war that we Americans lost. Not quit, not negotiated a deal, but lost. This is what our civilization looks and feels like when it is totally defeated. Moving over to the North, this is what our civilization looks like under extreme duress. What rules of civilization do we keep? What do we let go? Why? This is how we got to our modern version of our country.

I never realized until recently how different the United States was prior to 1860. We teach kids about July 4th and 1776, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and all of that, but all of that was really for a different country. For all practical intents and purposes, the country we have now was formed in 1861.

So many times we teach history as a linear process full of dates and events. This thing was wrong, so it led to this thing, which is naturally better. Logically then, the farther in history you go back, the more "wrong" people must be. This leads children to believe that progress is inevitable and that the people from the past were somehow stupid for thinking the things they did. But once you manage to emotionally connect to history, it suddenly blossoms into a beautiful tapestry of intelligent, honorable people doing the best they can under difficult circumstances. Lincoln wasn't Hitler, but the Southerners weren't Nazis, either. Now that I can see the southerner's viewpoint, it's a wonderfully complex story. I plan on learning more.

Are you living somewhere that people tell you a version of history that doesn't seem to make sense? Find people who can challenge your mind. Listen to their arguments. Feel their emotion, but even more importantly, double and triple-check their facts. You just might learn something. I know I did.

And that was worth being a little contrary and poking around.

Abraham Lincoln was a famous micro-manager. They said he spent as much time in the telegraph office as he did in the White House.