2006 Seen In 1862

Bruce Thorton has an excellent post (Reflection on 1862 War critics offer nothing new in 2006.) on Victor David Hanson’s Private Papers wherein he compares the trials of Lincoln and the Union in 1862 with those of the current administration and the prosecution of the War on Terror.

So what we are going through now is what we should expect, particularly in a mid-term election year (as was 1862), when the party out of power is eager for victory, and the party in power is eager for reelection. But history also reveals something novel about our own predicament –– the unrealistic expectations of a therapeutic culture that refuses to accept the tragic limitations of human action and that prizes psychic and material comfort over everything else.

Such attitudes are nowhere to be found in 1862. Whereas contemporary critics obsess over casualties, declare failure halfway through the war, and demand that we give up before the issue is decided, the critics back then for the most part were angry not about soldiers dying but about a lack of aggressiveness. Their carping and nitpicking, as the statements of Bryant and Phillips indicate, were driven by the demand that their side do whatever it took to win and win quickly –– not, as with most of our contemporary critics, by a dissatisfaction with the usual brutal costs of war. McClellan’s caution earned him the love of his troops, but led to his downfall because his lack of offensive aggression, while it kept his men alive, cost several chances for victory, particularly when his army was entrenched before Richmond, faced by a rebel army it outnumbered by more than a fourth….

Lincoln understood something of the reason and means of conducting a war.

That some suffer, perhaps even unjustly, during the conduct of a war is no argument for not fighting: “Would you drop the war where it is?” he asked rhetorically. “Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose-water? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied?” He concluded in terms that would horrify our modern tender sensibilities: “ I shall do no more than I can, and I shall do all I can.”

Lincoln was as good as his word, finally getting rid of McClellan and putting in charge U. S. “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, who like the President understood the tragic nature of war, what Lincoln called the “terrible arithmetic”: killing some today so that more don’t die tomorrow.

I strongly urge you to go visit and read the whole thing.