[lit-ideas] Re: The Illinois Xerxes
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 10:50:44 -0600
JL:
>>So, I'm assuming you (Geary) don't want Lincoln being described as a Xerxes
>>at all.<<
Don't care one way or another. Lincoln was just another ignorant man fumbling
his way through life, believing what he believed without knowing why, wanting
what he wanted without knowing why, bowing to the exigencies of survival,
rooting up what small pleasures he could in the barren fields of public life.
I once thought him a great man, now I hardly ever think of him at all and when
I do, the adjective 'great' doesn't come to mind. Too bad he wasn't more
imaginative. Surely there could have some other way to resolve the political
problem of the day than by killing 620,000 people. He personally didn't kill
them, of course. He and every other fool who championed the war did, including
my great grandfather Silvius Emory Sweet. Not a very sweet man, in fact, a
slave holder. Lost an arm and all his teeth in the battle of Chickamauga.
Taken prisoner, he refused to salute the Union flag, a story retold a thousand
times by the Sweet family in near sacrosanct tones -- but then, he was missing
his right arm, wasn't he? Slavery was no burning issue for Lincoln, it was
preserving the Union that drove him. He was content to let the South have her
slaves. But after the catastrophes of Shiloh and Antietam, Lincoln realized
that he needed a much more emotional reason for fighting the war than simply
preserving the Union, so he emancipated the slaves and immediately brought on
board the fiery Abolitionists. George Bush must be a student of Lincoln.
If there were such a thing as a "great man", I'd nominate Vaclav Havel over
Lincoln. When the Slovaks decided they couldn't stomach being linked with the
Czechs any longer, Mr. Havel didn't send in the troops, he said, "Fine. Go in
peace." Wow! Now that's a great human being! What if Lincoln had done that?
Would the U.S. be what it is today? Probably not. We might have been better,
might have been worse. We'll never know. The omniscient God knows though. I
wonder does He grieve over our missed opportunity? Does He walk the clouds
wondering what He might have done to tip the scales more towards
reconciliation. Does He wring His hands bemoaning the lost counterfactual that
if the U.S. had broken up, we'd never have become a world power and used that
power so recklessly and with such disdain for His other souls?
When I'd ask my father questions he couldn't answer, he'd bite his lower lip
and say: "I don't know. When you die, be sure to ask God." Took some of the
sting out of the thought of death anyway.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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