Story originally printed in the Holmen Courier or online at www.holmencourier.com
Published - Tuesday, June 24, 2008
GRAY MATTER: History has an odd way of coming up again
There’s an unpopular wartime Republican president, a federal lawmaker from New York losing in a fierce battle and people protesting the progress of the war? This scenario is all too familiar to us in 2008.
President Bush’s approval rating is in the cellar. Hillary Clinton has allegedly lost the Democratic nomination — it’s not official until the superdelegates cast their vote at the Democratic National Convention in August. It goes without saying that there are people from coast to cost protesting United States involvement in Iraq.
But the scenario in the introductory paragraph doesn’t just apply to current events. Roll the calendar back 145 years to 1863.
President Abraham Lincoln had more dissension than approval from the populace regarding the Civil War. Yet our teachers in school taught us that President Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents in history because of the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared an end to slavery.
That is reason enough to declare Lincoln a great president. But on the other side of the penny, Lincoln was disliked because he underestimated how long the Civil War would take.
Because Lincoln was under the impression the Civil War would be a relatively short ordeal, the length of a soldier’s enlistment was 90 days when the war began in 1861. By July 1863, riots over a military draft swept through New York City.
The lawmaker from New York whom I referenced wasn’t a senator running for president but a cavalier man named Daniel Sickles, a U.S. representative. He was given an officer’s commission, making his way up to being a major general in the Union army.
Here was a man with no military experience, nor was he a West Point grad, leading troops at Gettysburg. Even though the battle at Gettysburg was a victory for General George Meade and the North, Sickles lost half of his men and his right leg because he wouldn’t take Meade’s tactical advice.
It just goes to show how similar things were for America during the Civil War as they are today. Except in 2008, we have the advantage of being almost a century-and-a-half removed from one of the toughest eras in American history with the Civil War.
Once America was able to move her collective nose away from the mirror from the Civil War and evaluate its impact, she saw both the lessons learned and the blessings that followed.
That’s why I firmly believe we are not far enough removed to honestly and fully evaluate the impact of the current administration. That’s because history does, as they say, repeat itself.
Columnist Tim Gray, a West Salem resident, can be reached at tim.gray.matter@gmail.com.
All stories copyright 2006 Holmen Courier and other attributed sources.