Remembering History

Why Gettysburg Matters

Two years ago, on the 150th anniversary of Fort Sumpter, I wrote a piece called Forgetting History, in which I suggested that the remembrance of history isn't all it's cracked up to be. In places like Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and the Middle East, long memories can lead to intractable, centuries-long problems.

I wasn't entirely serious, of course. I read far too many history books to mean what I said. But last year I visited the Gettysburg Battlefield for the first time, and this week, on the 150th anniversary of the battle I'm now fully prepared to recant that earlier piece. Gettysburg is the kind of place that makes me wish the English language could reclaim the original meaning of the word awesome - to inspire awe - and reminds us why remembering history is so important.  

For those who are a little hazy on what happened at Gettysburg, it is the largest battle fought in North America, the inspiration for the Gettysburg Address, and the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War.* After a string of successes by Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, the Union scored a decisive victory in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It would take two more years and much more bloodshed, but the cause of the Confederacy was lost at Gettysburg.

* I've yet to read Allen Guelzo's new book, "Gettysburg: The Last Invasion", but it's been highly recommended by people I trust.  For a miniature account of Gettysburg, here's Guelzo writing in National Review this week.  

How bloody was the battle? Consider this: in three days, on a field measuring roughly 5 miles by 2 miles, nearly 8,000 men were killed. To put this in perspective, in the past decade, in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, approximately 6,600 American soldiers were killed in action.

Rising Angels

The reputations of historical figures are like stocks - over long periods of time they rise and fall, sometimes in a steady pattern and sometimes sharply. Joshua Chamberlain, one of the heroes of Gettysburg, has seen a particularly interesting pattern.

On Day 2 of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine under the command of Colonel Chamberlain held the far left of the Union line, on a hill called Little Round Top. They held off numerous attacks by the 15th Alabama regiment, until they ran out of ammunition. As the 15th came up the hill one more time, Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets, and with empty guns they charged down the hill, scattering the Alabamans. (For Hollywood's excellent depiction of this moment, click here.)

Chamberlain had many laurels heaped upon him during his lifetime.  He won the Medal of Honor for his actions on Little Round Top.  He was promoted to General.  He was given the great honor of commanding the Union troops during the surrender ceremony at Appomattox.  And he served four terms as the Governor of Maine.

But it's fair to say that a century after the guns fell silent, his name was little-known to most Americans, except for Civil War scholars and buffs.  Then, in 1974 Michael Shaara wrote The Killer Angels, and placed Chamberlain at the center of his best-selling Pulitzer-Prize winning novel.  In 1990, PBS broadcast Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War, and Burns followed Shaara's interpretation.  Finally, in 1993 Hollywood filmed The Killer Angels (calling it Gettysburg), and Joshua Chamberlain was a star again.

*  by 'star', I don't mean he was nearly as popular or famous as, say, the 3rd Kardashian sister or whoever the Bachelorette is dating these days.  But he's nerd-famous, anyway.  

Thanks to Shaara's book, Burns' documentary, and Jeff Daniels' performance, crowds flocked to Gettysburg, to walk the hallowed ground of Devil's Den, the Peach Orchard, and Culp's Hill.  But mostly, they wanted to see Little Round Top, where Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine made their stand.

Which, over time, began to annoy the tour guides of Gettysburg.  They grew frustrated at visitors who were ignorant or uninterested in the rest of the battlefield.  They felt about Joshua Chamberlain the way I do about Derek Jeter - great, yes, but not worthy of all the damn attention he gets*.

*  We got one of those tour guides last year.  I made the mistake of mentioning Killer Angels, and he decided I was one of those Shaara worshippers who needed to be set straight.  In fact, in our tour he ostentatiously skipped over the section of Little Round Top held by the 20th Maine!

I understand where they're coming from.  These guides have studied the battle inside and out - they want you to know about the Railroad Cut and Cemetery Hill and the men who fought bravely and died.  

But this is where remembering history comes into play.  Gettyburg was a large, complex battle - 160,000 soldiers fought for 3 days over 10 square miles.  And the Civil War was an epic war - there were over a million casualties over 4 years in a nation with a population of 30 million.  That's the equivalent of 10 million casualties.

Michael Shaara helped us to remember Joshua Chamberlain - and focusing on a citizen soldier who fought for his country because he believed in what the United States was and could be - helps us understand who we are today, and what we could become tomorrow.

On Spielberg's LINCOLN - Part 2

[Spoiler Alert: In this post I reveal key plot points of the movie Lincoln, such as the defeat of the Confederacy, the end of slavery, and the assassination of the title charac - oops, sorry!]

As I said in Part 1, I'm less interested in doing a film review of Lincoln than I am in sharing some of my thoughts about the many choices that director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner had to make.  Here are some thoughts on those choices.

Why the 13th Amendment?
Ask any student of Lincoln to nominate a storyline for a Lincoln film, I think you'd get a list like this:

• The period between the Battle of Chancellorsville (Lee's masterpiece and the high tide of the Confederacy) and the twin victories at Gettysburg and Vickburg three months later turning the tide.  The movie would end with the Gettysburg Address.

• His handling of generals from First Bull Run through his eventual appointment of Ulysses Grant.  The movie would end with the surrender at Appomattox.

• The summer of 1864, as carnage engulfed the Union army and Lincoln's cause seemed lost.  The climax would be the fall of Atlanta and Lincoln's reelection.  The movie would end with Lincoln's Second Inaugural.

• April 1865 - using Jay Winik's excellent book as a template.  The surrender at Appomattox, the passage of the 13th Amendment, and the assassination of Lincoln would be the 3 key events.

But Spielberg and Kushner chose to put the 13th Amendment in the foreground.  It's an unexpected and brilliant choice.  Remember how, in grade school, you were taught that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, even though at 12 years old it sort of seemed obvious that it was?  Well, historiography has very much moved slavery to the front and center of Civil War studies, and a film about Lincoln that aspires to greatness must have slavery front and center.

Just as important, the trend in Lincoln studies the past couple decades has been to focus on his consummate political skill.  Honest Abe didn't just tell funny stories and give eloquent speeches - he was a shrewd and wily backroom politician, who perfectly balanced the factions of his own party throughout the war.  

The movie Lincoln zeroes in perfectly on those two twin pillars of Lincoln and Civil War history.  But still...if you wanted to make a movie about the politics of ending slavery, you could have made this movie:

• From the summer of 1862, when Lincoln first considers the Emancipation Proclamation through the Battle of Antietam in September, the victory that gives him the political cover to issue it.  The movie would end with the official release of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.*  

By making the film they did, they surprised this student of Lincoln, and illuminated a corner of history I didn't know particularly well.  More importantly, they found the perfect canvas to place the end of slavery as the only thing that mattered in the Civil War, and to emphasize the role Lincoln's political genius played in ending it. 

*  If you're interested in the politics of emancipation, try William Safire's underrated novel, Freedom

The Assassination Scene
As I recounted in a post a couple years ago, Ken Burns once said he'd never been to Ford's Theater, the site of Lincoln's assassination.  He couldn't bear to go there.  The only explanation I can give for this scene is that Spielberg couldn't bear to go there*.

*  I won't describe the scene if you haven't seen it, but let's just say Spielberg films around the moment without showing it.

Or perhaps, he was striking some sort of blow at John Wilkes Booth by not memorializing his infamous act.  Booth was America's first assassin (and first idiot actor activist), and believed he would be made world-famous by his dramatic act.  Spielberg kept him offscreen, the way baseball broadcasts refuse to show the imbeciles running onto the field to disrupt play.

But still...film the damn scene!  Let us, the moviegoer, experience the shock and horror.  Insult Booth by emphasizing him tripping in his dramatic moment - make him more of a cowardly klutz than a dashing avenger.

What a lost opportunity.

The Surrender at Appomattox
The surrender of the Confederacy was central to the passage of the 13th Amendment*.  But clearly, Spielberg didn't have the time to show this famous moment in all of its solemn glory**.  Nor did he want to skip it altogether.

*  although, perhaps not as central as the movie presents it.  Spielberg and Kushner take some liberties here, though as this post at Disunion shows, the story they tell is plausible 

I'm not sure what they could have done differently here, and perhaps showing Lee mounting his horse outside the Appomattox Court House is the best they could have done.  Showing Lee as clearly defeated and not as some chivalrous knight laying down his sword, has value too.

But I didn't find the scene quite believable.  Perhaps the problem is that the actor chosen to play Grant looks more like Sherman!

**  The modest commercial success of Lincoln will perhaps inspire other historical recreations of the Civil War.  They could do much worse than a film based on Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox

Lincoln slaps his son, Robert
This is the moment that has historians most perplexed.  There is no historical record of it.  There is no evidence he slapped his son.  If he did slap his son, it doesn't have very much to do with the passage of the 13th Amendment.  Unnecessary.


Where's God?
We live in a secular age - and Hollywood is a devoutly secular place.  But it is simply impossible to deny the significance of Christianity in driving the abolitionist movement.  (And for that matter, the 20th century civil rights movement.  It's worth remembering that its leader was Reverend Martin Luther King, and he didn't give speeches, he preached sermons.)  The typical radical Republican, as personified by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie, was a devout, even fanatical Christian.

But this film does deny, or at least ignore, the significance.  And in the only mention of religion in the movie, it makes a startling change.  Late in the movie, Abraham and Mary are in a carriage, and Lincoln says that after his Presidency he'd like to visit Jerusalem, the "city of Solomon and David".  But in Mary Todd Lincoln's own account of the story, Lincoln said he wanted to "walk in the footsteps of the Savior".

Lincoln himself, as near as we can tell, was ambivalent about religion, and certainly a latecomer to a belief in abolition.  But true abolitionists in Lincoln's cabinet, like Salmon Chase and to a lesser extent William Seward, were devout Christians, and it drove their belief in the righteousness of abolition.

It seems Spielberg and Kushner intentionally excised Christianity from the film.  And, to paraphrase Seinfeld, this doesn't offend me as a Catholic, it offends me as an historian.

###

I really didn't intend to write such a nit-picking post.  I loved this movie, I really did.  Every moment Daniel Day-Lewis was on screen I was utterly captivated - I truly believed I was watching Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps, my admiration for the film and gratitude to Steven Spielberg for making it mean my standards are impossibly high.  And I found myself wondering afterwards more about the lost opportunities than the great moments.

But still...the 13th Amendment was the right choice.  Appomattox couldn't have been done differently.  The slap only took a second.

I just wish they'd taken us to Ford's Theater.

On Spielberg's LINCOLN - Part 1

A Sort of Review

I have a long history of being disappointed by history movies.

My biggest disappointment was The Patriot.  Hollywood has given us many wonderful WWII movies and a few Civil War classics.  We've had great movies about WWI and even one damn good flick about The French and Indian War (starring this guy named Daniel Day-Lewis).

But for reasons I can't fathom a century of film making hasn't given us a single great movie about the Revolutionary War.  Indeed, Hollywood hasn't even tried very hard - there have been fewer movies about the American Revolution since 1900 than there have been vampire movies since 2000.  (I'm not kidding; look it up.)

So years ago, when I heard the screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan was hooking up with Braveheart himself to do a flick based on Revolutionary hero Francis Merion, my hopes soared.  Alas, while the film has its moments (the Yorktown scene is worth ten minutes of your time) its absurd demonization of British troops and the overacting of its star ruined it.

For several years now, I've been engaged in a similar experience of cinema anticipation.  When I first heard Steven Spielberg was planning a film about Abraham Lincoln, an historical obsession of mine, Liam Neeson was rumored to play the 16th President.  I couldn't quite see the rugged Irishman in the role but figured, hey, this Spielberg fellow might be better at this sort of thing than I am.

I lost track of the project until that magical day when the first press photo for the movie was released. My  reaction upon seeing that picture was - Whoa.

Another inhabitant of the Emerald Isle had the part, and the likeness was staggering.  At this point, I went into history geek fanboy overdrive.  When Tony Kushner was announced as screenwriter I wrinkled my brow - not much in his oeuvre suggested him as an obvious choice.   But who cares - look at that picture!

I tracked the casting with the sort of attention one usually reserves for their financial portfolio.  David Straitharn as Secretary of State William Seward?  Hmm, I can see that.  Kelly Leak from the Bad News Bears as Alexander Stevens?  Inspired.  The Sheriff from My Cousin Vinny as Edwin Stanton?!*

*  watching the film, I was surprised at how many actors from my favorite television shows appeared: Arnold Rothstein from Boardwalk Empire, Boyd Crowder from Justified, Sol Star from Deadwood

And then finally, last night, joined by the Rock Star, I saw the film.  I'm no movie critic, and you don't need another amateur telling you Day-Lewis is brilliant (he is) or that the period details are perfect (they are) or that the movie's surprisingly funny (it is).

But I'm a bit of a Lincoln buff, and am particularly interested in the ways he's depicted in fictional settings - and all history movies are essentially historical fiction.   I found myself keenly interested in the many choices the filmmakers had to make - what to show, what to skip, what to invent - and found myself alternately applauding, criticizing, and puzzling over them.

I'll save that for Part 2.  But a word before I go there:

When I'm disappointed by a history flick, it's not because I'm a stickler for the facts.  My favorite history film is Edward Zwick's Glory, which is riddled with errors, inventions, and omissions.  Historian James McPherson in a brilliant review in The New Republic points all of them out, but concludes that Glory "is the most powerful movie about that war ever made."  McPherson argues that a movie is historical fiction and has a power to present the Truth accurately, even if it must change some facts to get there.

The big invention is presenting the 54th Massachusetts as consisting of mostly former slaves while in fact it was mostly former freedman.  The filmmakers wanted to tell the larger story of black soldiers - who were mostly former slaves - fighting in the Civil War, and changed some facts about the 54th to do that.

So, Part 2 won't be a collection of gotchas or a chance to show off my Lincoln knowledge (ok, it might be a little of that).  More of an honest wondering over the difficult choices involved in packing four of history's most momentous months into a 2 hour movie.  

Go to Part 2

An Enduring Democratic Majority?

A Brief History of Game-Changing Elections

[note: this is an update/re-write/mash-up of two posts I wrote 4 years ago.  See here and here for original posts.]


In the aftermath of most elections, there is a debate about its long-term meaning.  Specifically: does the outcome of this election mean certain political and demographic forces have aligned in such a way that the victorious party has built an enduring majority and will win many more elections?

Right now, Democrats hope (and Republicans fear) that the reelection of Barack Obama - and the specific demographic conditions that made that reelection possible - are the beginning of sustainable and durable coalition.

But we’ve been here before, haven’t we?

In 2004, George W. Bush won a relatively comfortable victory (at least compared to 2000) and a library’s worth of articles poured praise on Karl Rove, who had seemingly discovered the key to lasting Republican dominance: a passionate organized base that cares about family values. But only four years later, the Republicans lost the White House, and eight years later are in disarray. So much for lasting Republican dominance.

In 1992 Bill Clinton supposedly changed the game. A sax-playing Southern baby boomer who could name all four Beatles beat an old Washington hand who’d fought in WWII, ending 12 straight years of Republicans in the White House. A new era had begun! But by the time a quite tainted but still-popular Clinton left office, the Republicans had taken the House, the Senate, the White House, and the majority of governorships. So much for new eras.

Even the Reagan Revolution wasn’t quite as revolutionary as it’s made to seem. Reagan won an astounding 49 state victory in 1984 and a now-unthinkable 525-13 electoral college victory.  You didn't have to be Nate Silver to call that election.  But 4 years after the Gipper left office the Democrats had the White House back. So much for revolutions.

Only 3 elections in American history have been truly game changing, in the sense that the victory represented a political realignment that was sustained for decades after.  You may have heard of the three gentlemen who won those elections: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.

Thomas Jefferson - 1800
Now that was a messy election. First of all, as brilliant as the Founders were, they hadn’t quite figured out all this electoral college stuff yet, so when Jefferson’s running mate Aaron Burr* technically had as many electoral college votes as Jefferson, he made a play for the White House. It took a while to sort out, but Jefferson eventually took the oath and went on to create a sustainable majority that lasted for decades.

* While in office, VP Burr killed the former Treasury Secretary, attempted to crown himself emperor of Mexico, and got arrested for treason.  And people think Biden's a loose cannon!

Jefferson’s Republicans (not the same as today’s) had so thoroughly destroyed their political competitors, the Federalists, that his hand-picked successors (Madison and Monroe) took the White House for 16 more years, and by the time John Quincy Adams, the son of the last Federalist President, took office, even he was a Republican. The Federalist Party was dead.

That was a sea change election.

Abraham Lincoln - 1860
The remarkable thing about this election is that Lincoln's party, the Republicans (this one is the same as today), was fairly new.  It grew out of the ashes of the Whig party and ran its first Presidential candidate in 1856.  They won their first Presidential election - barely - in 1860.  By the summer of 1864 Lincoln's reelection looked unlikely, and the idea of lasting Republican dominance - or even a lasting Republican party - seemed improbable.

But Atlanta fell in early September, assuring Lincoln's reelection.  And then what a run the GOP went on.  From 1860 to 1932 the White House was virtually the sole property of the Republican Party, as Grover Cleveland* was the only Democrat to win a head-to-head election against a Republican.

*  And he did it twice; Cleveland was an outstanding politician, winning the popular vote 3 times despite being named Grover

Can you imagine that today?  A new party is formed, takes the White House in less than a decade, and holds it for nearly a century?

Franklin Roosevelt - 1932
Democrats looking for signs of a long fruitful electoral run should start here.  FDR came into office much as Barack Obama did: a long period of Republican domination ended with a Wall Street calamity, thrusting a Democrat with profound faith in government action into office.  The Democrat is reelected 4 years later, after the passage of huge federal programs and despite a still struggling economy.

In FDR's case, the Democrats went on to win 7 of the next 9 elections (losing only to war hero Eisenhower).  It took LBJ's Vietnam catastrophe to end this run.


Is Obama’s Win Sustainable?
Have the Democrats won that kind of election?

When analyzing whether an election has created genuine political realignment, you need to see if the conditions are easy to duplicate. And certain demographic trends, particularly the growing importance of the Hispanic vote, suggest it is possible.

And, as I hope to explore in a later post, the Republicans are out of step with the majority on social issues like gay marriage and abortion, and this situation will only worsen.  If the Republicans don't learn how to move to the center on social issues, they are going to have a hard time getting my kids' vote.

But several other conditions will be nearly impossible to duplicate in future elections.

The first is Obama’s charismatic hold on the electorate. He's not quite the rock star he was in 2008, but remains enormously popular, particularly with African-Americans and 18-35 year-olds.  That kind of star power comes along very rarely. Reagan had it. Kennedy had it. Its a wonderful thing for a particular candidate to possess, but it is not a quality to build a sustainable majority on.

Can Joe Biden duplicate that in 2016? Hillary Clinton? If you’re thinking Al Gore, remember that while he was briefly the world’s most improbable movie star and the winner of the increasingly ridiculous Nobel Peace Prize, he’s already failed in the role of filling the shoes of a charismatic predecessor.

The second thing the Dems won’t be able to duplicate is the Blame Dubya tactic.  A majority of voters in exit polls still blame George W. Bush for our current economic woes.  By 2016, the Democrats will own the economy.

And finally, there is this interesting trivial fact:  all but 2 reelected Presidents in U.S. history have seen their popular vote percentage increase on reelection.  The first, Andrew Jackson, only declined because a 3rd party candidacy won 8% of the vote.

And the second, of course, is Barack Obama.  Put differently, it was the weakest reelection win in U.S. history, suggesting voters were saying, "Okay, we'll give you 4 more years.  But if things haven't improved by 2016..."

And that the key, isn't it?

It is a very rare thing to build a sustainable majority and it cannot be built on personality.  His administrations have to govern with  performance.

That's how lasting majorities are built.

The Enduring Attraction of the Civil War

I recently watched Gods and Generals, a 2003 Civil War movie based on the novel by Jeff Shaara. It attempts, in the span of 3 hours and 45 minutes, to cover the two years of fighting in Northern Virginia between April 1861 and April 1863.

It is an impossible task and the filmmakers fail. Impossible because those two years include First Bull Run, Second Bull Run, The Valley campaign, the 7 Days battle, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. These are some of the largest, most important battles in American history.  And oh, by the way, these two years saw some of the most momentous political events in American history, like the election of Abraham Lincoln, secession, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Maybe – maybe – you can capture the sweep of this period with a long miniseries, a la Band of Brothers*. But it is impossible in a theatrically-released film, even one as interminably long as Gods and Generals, to cover the period without unforgivable omissions. For example, the filmmakers simply pretend that George McClellan, the most important Union general of the period, and the battles he was in, simply didn’t exist.

* The mini-series is a highly underrated art form. In fact, two of my favorite “movies” of all time, Band of Brothers and Lonesome Dove, are miniseries. Miniseries are the only way to fully present a book on screen in all its richness. Also, to be fair, the filmmakers behind Gods & Generals also made Gettysburg, a fine Civil War film.

But still…I watched the whole damn thing. Yeah, some of it was painful, particularly the scenes that had, you know, dialogue. (in fact, some of the worst dialogue is uttered by Stonewall Jackson, played by the fine actor Stephen Lang, who you probably saw as Colonel Quaritch in a little flick called Avatar.)

But the battle scenes –it’s impossible to take your eyes away from the battle scenes, particularly if you’ve ever been captivated by the Civil War. The first clash at Bull Run. The Northern waves rolling up Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg. And most compellingly, the Confederates under Robert Rodes stealthily emerging from the woods to hit O.O. Howard’s troops at Chancellorsville, the high mark of the Confederacy.

The Civil War is the American Iliad, and seeing these scenes brought to life as realistically as it’s ever been done is extraordinary. And it’s a reminder of the enduring attraction of the Civil War.

A Dramatic Climax
Ken Burns, the brilliant documentarian who made The Civil War and many other extraordinary documentaries about America, recounted a conversation he had with Shelby Foote, the historian who became an unlikely star in Burns’ masterpiece. Burns mentioned that he had never been to Ford’s Theater, the site of Lincoln’s assassination, because he found the idea of being there too emotionally painful.

Foote exclaimed, “But Lincoln’s assassination was the best part of the Civil War!” (Or something to that effect; I’m going from memory on the quote).

Burns was shocked. He knew Foote to be a great admirer of Lincoln; in fact Foote believed Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest* to be the two authentic geniuses produced by The Civil War.

* Forrest is a fascinating individual, in many ways the epitome of the best and worst of America. He was a poor man who made a fortune, but the fortune was made at least in part as a slave trader. He was a brilliant, self-taught cavalry commander; a born genius on the battlefield, he was the only individual to enlist as a private and finish the war as a lieutenant general. He was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, but in 1875 gave a speech that recommended what was, for the time, an enlightened and radically aggressive agenda of equality for black Americans. The curious contradictory nature of Forrest made him a touchstone for many writers, notably Faulkner. Today he is mostly known as the guy who gave Mr. Gump his first name. It must pain the ghost of N.B. Forrest, one of the most aggressive military leaders in American history, that his name is most famously associated with the expression “Run, Forrest, run!!”

But Burns slowly realized what Foote meant. Shelby Foote was a novelist by training and a historian by accident. And as a novelist the assassination of Abraham Lincoln – days after Appomattox but before the final surrender of the South – was a dramatic climax to the story of the Civil War, a perfect finish to a beautifully constructed plot. (Burns, on the other hand, is the classic sensitive artist type, hence his reluctance to enter Ford’s).

That story stayed with me, and the more I thought about it the more I realized that Americans’ enduring interest in the Civil War can be partly explained by the unusually dramatic arc of the war. In fact, it all plays out rather nicely as a 3-act play.

Act I
The first act centers on the run-up to and start of the war.

It can start in many places – as early as the first slaves arriving in Virginia, or the compromises built into the Constitution, or the end of the Mexican War, which added new states to the Union and new controversy over whether those states would be free or not.

But I’d start it on May 22, 1856, when South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks beat Massachussets Senator Charles Sumner with a wooden cane on the floor of the Senate, in response to an anti-slavery speech made Sumner three days earlier. The beating was so savage that Sumner couldn’t return to the Senate for 3 years. *

* And people get worked up about Joe Wilson – also of South Carolina - shouting “You Lie!” during President Obama’s healthcare speech, or Rahm Emmanuel's bullying. Anyone who thinks Washington DC used to be more civil should get thee to a library.

From there we’d follow the story through Bleeding Kansas, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln’s election, Secession, and the Fort Sumter crisis. We’d be introduced to characters who’d become important later – like Robert E. Lee, a colonel in the United States Army, who ends John Brown’s siege of Harper’s Ferry.

Act I ends with the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the Civil War.

Act II
The story of Act II is the story of the underdog Confederacy. They are outnumbered, out gunned, out-allied, out-everything – and yet they win battle after battle. Robert E. Lee is the star of Act II, and a succession of bumbling Union generals provide the pathos and the comedy. But others rise too – the flamboyant Confederate cavalryman Jeb Stuart, an eloquent but unsure Abraham Lincoln learning his job, and just offstage, a stoic Union general named U.S. Grant providing foreshadowing out West.

Act II has no shortage of political drama, as Lincoln balances the demands of Radical Republicans who want abolition and Copperhead Democrats who want to let the South go. He demonstrates his political shrewdness through the timing and military justification for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Act II ends with the Southern invasion of Pennsylvania and the dramatic victory by the Union at Gettysburg, coupled with Grant’s victory at Vicksburg. With the end of the act, the tide has turned.

Act III
Here’s where Foote’s observation about Ford’s Theater comes into play. Act III would be a fairly boring act – a grinding series of battles between Lee and Grant leading to the inevitable Union victory. There is no drama and little poetry during the brutal final 9 months of the war. Then – pow! – John Wilkes Booth, who fittingly happens to be an accomplished dramatic actor*, kills Lincoln, leaps onto the stage and runs out of the theater. A despicable act, but as Foote says, from a dramatic standpoint the highlight of the war, and the one that destined Lincoln for the pantheon.

* Again...people who think actors and their political views are annoying now should recall the past...

Of course a great play requires more than just compelling characters and a well-structured plot. It needs dialogue, and boy does the CW deliver dialogue. Quotes from Lincoln alone fill books, but many other quotes from "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" to "War is hell" derive from the War Between the States.


One can argue, certainly, that the American Revolution is a more important war. The Revolution created America, whereas the Civil War merely maintained it. And we have been, since at least 1994's Saving Private Ryan, obsessed with the Second World War.

But the Civil War endures, and I suspect it will for a long time. The walls of Troy were stormed some 3000 years ago (or maybe not; who knows?) and many of us are still familiar with the feats of Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus.

Will the same be true of the American Civil War? I suspect so, and like the Iliad, it will be in part because of its dramatic structure.

In Defense of Divisiveness

A big theme in this year’s election is unity. John McCain, the Republican most beloved by Democrats, and the soothing Democrat Barack Obama, both promise to end the political divisiveness that has plagued our national politics through the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

There is a lot of debate about whether or not they can succeed. But does anyone stop to wonder if, perhaps, unity is such a good thing?

Put differently: has anyone noticed that the list of America’s most successful Presidents is remarkably similar to the list of America’s most divisive Presidents?

The list starts with Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is widely considered to be America’s greatest President…but he’s got the Divisiveness Crown well in hand, too. Lincoln was elected President on November 6, 1860. He was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. In the 4-month interim between election and inauguration, 7 states seceded from the Union. They were so appalled at the idea of a Lincoln Presidency, they chose to leave the Union and start their own nation. Four more would follow.

Obviously, the divisiveness was more tragic than that. The Civil War ensued from the secession, and 600,000 American lives were lost. That, my friends, is divisiveness of the highest order.

While no other example is that stark, most great Presidents have not had the admiration of their political opponents:

FDR
Franklin Delano Roosevelt led a unified country through the Second World War, but his New Deal policies were fiercely contested by his political opponents through the Depression. As FDR began losing those battles in his 2nd term he unveiled his “court packing” plan – the idea was to simply add 5 new Supreme Court justices.

Republicans and conservative Democrats were disgusted at this power grab, and the Democrats were slaughtered in the mid-term elections of 1938.

Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was one of the first master practitioners - and victims - of nasty, partisan politics in American history. We know now the Sally Hemings story is true, but that doesn’t change the fact that his enemies hated him so much that they’d print it.

But TJ was no shrinking violet himself – he even secretly financed a newspaper to attack his opponents. The Federalist-Republican feud in the early 1800’s was a vicious back-alley fight that makes today's feuds seem like high tea at Harrods.

Jackson
Andrew Jackson was more despised by his political opponents than even Bush or Clinton could claim. He was even called a murderer – one campaign bill featured a picture of 6 coffins representing men Jackson had executed in court-martials or killed in duels. The attacks on him were so severe he blamed them for his wife’s sickness and death.


Coincidence?

What does all this mean? Is it merely a coincidence that great Presidents inspire the deepest hatred among their political opponents?

Of course not. Greatness only comes to the bold, to those who have and act upon strongly held convictions. Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were all powerful and effective leaders who had a very strong vision for the United States. They were attacked by those who disagreed. The South, for example, realized that Lincoln's positions on slavery were dramatically different than the wishy-washy compromisers who preceded him.

You want unity? Try Warren Harding on for size. Harding ran on a “let’s all get along” platform. His most famous speech came while running for President, in which he argued for normalcy:

"America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality...."

Yawn... But seriously, if you heard Barack Obama give this speech, would you be surprised? (Well, maybe at the use of the words nostrums and equipoise.) Would you nod your head along in agreement?

Harding was immensely popular while in office, but today, historians rank him among our least effective Presidents.

So, the next time you hear one of the candidates tell you that they are going to unify the country, stop to ask yourself if that is all it’s cracked up to be.


Sidebar: McCain may be the Democrat's favorite Republican, but he's the conservative Republican's least favorite Republican. Rush Limbaugh, whom you would assume is dedicating every waking moment to fighting the Clinton Restoration, in fact spends most of his time attacking John McCain. In this respect, McCain is similar to FDR, who sometimes inspired more vitriol from conservative Democrats than from Republicans.