'The whole essence of Lincoln is combining strength with mercy,' JohnAvlon tells ed_kilgore
President Abraham Lincoln meets with General George B. McClellan and a group of officers after the Battle of Antietam on October 3, 1862. Photo: History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The United States is in a period of mostly nonviolent civil conflict that erupted into insurrection on January 6, 2021, and remains highly dangerous.
Much of the discussion of your book has revolved around your suggestion that Lincoln’s strategy has implications for our current domestic situation, in terms of partisan and ideological polarization. Does someone have to “win” today’s conflicts before we can begin working toward peace? I’m old enough and southern enough to remember when the conventional wisdom was that President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, followed his vision for post–Civil War America. You describe Johnson in a chapter headline as “the anti-Lincoln.” Could you elaborate?
There is an intermediate step in Lincoln’s strategy, between surrender in war and magnanimity in peace, where he insisted on accomplishing the core goals of the war; an unprincipled victory wasn’t enough. The problem with Jackson is that he sought to simply return the country to the pre-war status quo, minus slavery. He was willing to abandon the war aims that Lincoln articulated in his Second Inaugural Address.
I think Lincoln understood that people are more likely to listen to reason when they’re greeted from a position of strength. You get further with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone. You need to win on the battlefield. You need to win the 1864 election for any peacemaking effort to matter. We’ve gotten away from that approach partially because the Cold War ended and the Iraq War failed — but also because of the rise of sort of a new isolationism, or maybe Jacksonism in foreign policy. Is a return to efforts to project our values and project strength through alliances rather than unilaterally threatening military force a Lincolnian thing to think about?
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