Bush, Lincoln, and Johnson: Presidents In Wartime

Four books are on the indispensable list as Christmas nears. Three deal with the war in all of its many complicated dimensions: Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts; Mark Steyn’s America Alone, and Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower. The fourth is an extended review of presidential leadership in a time of terrible suffering and mortal threat: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln barely won the Republican nomination in 1860, barely won the presidency, suffered a near total defeat in the elections of 1862, and presided over a Civil War that claimed the lives of 600,000 men out of a population of approximately 40 million, while leaving another 2 million wounded and large swathes of the country devastated. Copperheads openly demanded peace, and as the war dragged on, millions in the north began to wonder whether the country was worth the cost in carnage. General after general disappointed him, some turned against him publicly, and one –McClellan—ran against him in 1864.

Lincoln was attacked by press and political foe with a fury that had no precedent and which has had no sequel. Yet Lincoln persevered, and today books like Kearns-Goodwin’s chart his genius and his character, and fly off the shelves by the millions.

Two modern presidents have faced fury in the press because of stalled wars. Truman, of course, looks pretty good fifty years after leaving office, but the country never generally advocated quitting in Korea: The voters wanted to win. LBJ was broken because the country did indeed want out of Vietnam. Unlike Korea, we had not been attacked. Unlike today, it was difficult to perceive a threat to the United States worth the cost of so many young lives.

In yesterday’s press conference, a reporter rather stupidly asked the president if he felt the pain of the loss of American lives: Reporter: Mr. President, Lyndon Johnson famously didn’t sleep during the Vietnam War, questioning his own decisions. You have always seemed very confident of your decisions. But I can’t help but wonder if this has been a time of painful realization for you, as you yourself have acknowledged that some of the policies you hoped would succeed have not. And I wonder if you can talk to us about that. Has it been a painful time? GWB: Yeah, thanks. Most painful aspect of my presidency has been knowing that good men and women have died in combat. I read about it every night. And my heart breaks for a mother or father or husband or wife or son or daughter. It just does. And so when you ask about pain, that’s pain. I reach out to a lot of the families. I spend time with them. I am always inspired by their spirit. Most people have asked me to do one thing, and that is to make sure that their child didn’t die in vain, and I agree with that.

Lincoln, too, suffered as men under his command died, as did every president who leads in a time of war. What sustains them –if they are sustained—is the understanding that sacrifice of that most awful sort defends the country and all of its people.

I interviewed Doris Kearns Goodwin yesterday, and asked about parallels between Bush and Lincoln. This superb historian resisted some comparisons, but acknowledged others: [HH: But how ought the President today respond to retired generals who are arguing with him now…pulling a McClellan in retirement, arguing that the war is mismanaged?

DKG: It’s really an unusual situation that these generals are doing this. I mean, it hasn’t happened all that much in our history. I mean, mainly, probably because the access to media today is so much greater for these retired generals than there would have been before. It might have been a letter that somebody might have written to a newspaper before…

DKG: But now, they’re appearing on cable television, they’re remarks are much more widely distributed around the country. And I think the only thing that President Bush can do is to just not deal with it. I don’t think it helps him to get into a debate with them. He has to just say, and I think that’s what he’s doing. I mean, whether one agrees with him or not, President Bush is going to come out, it seems to me, in these next couple of weeks with his plan. He will have listened to the Baker plan, he will have listened to these retired generals. He’ll be talking to his commanders in the field, and seeing what they’re saying over there, and he’s going to say what he wants to say. I mean, that, I’m sure of with him. He doesn’t seem to be swaying with all these opinions that are going on.

HH: Does that parallel how Lincoln in the worst days of the war, after bloody setbacks, or even bloodier victories, is that how he conducted himself?

DKG: I suspect it does. You know, again, whether one agrees with the content of what President Bush is doing, during the worst days of the war in 1864, when a lot of people were telling Lincoln you’re not going to be able to win this war, the only chance is a compromise peace, and you’re going to have to give up emancipation, because there’s no way the south will come to a compromised peace if you force them to emancipation. And there were a lot of people in the north who were saying to him this war’s gone on too long, it’s never going to be won. And at that point, he said “I have made my pledge to the black Americans for emancipation. I cannot go back on that.”]

Bush has made pledges too, most importantly that he will do everything he can to prevent another 9/11. How will all of this play out over the long decades ahead? I asked Kearns-Goodwin that question as well:

[HH: Can you conceive of a Doris Kearns Goodwin a hundred and fifty years hence writing a book as respectful of Lincoln…of Bush as you have written of Lincoln?

DKG: I think…you know, what may happen a hundred fifty years from now is that somebody may be able to argue that what President Bush wanted to do in Iraq was the right thing. What doesn’t seem similar so far is that the responsibility of a president in a time of war is to keep the country on his side, and in order to make sure that he’s got enough mobilization of resources so that the fight can be fought as far as he…to me, this is where Lyndon Johnson failed in the end, by not keeping the country on his side. He thought he was right in Vietnam, but eventually, because he never got the country on his side long enough and hard enough, because he had told them it was going to be over quicker than it ever was, I think that’s going to be the problem for President Bush as well.]

Here I have to disagree with my professor from decades ago. Lincoln did not “keep the country on his side,” he kept the interests of the country always fixed before his eyes. In the press conference yesterday he repeatedly referred to the “calling of our times,” and whether one agrees or disagrees with his course, only the absurd dismiss the idea of the dangers of the era in which we live. The particulars of his course can be debated –I thought the dismissal of Rumsfeld an error, others think the troops in Iraq are too few—but what Team of Rivals presents in complete detail and persuasiveness is that the presidency in war requires absolute conviction and resolute purpose from its occupant.

As we begin the process of assessing the would-be successors to Bush, his example in this aspect of presidential leadership, and Lincoln’s, should be the first measuring stick. The burdens of the office can and have crushed many men. If they do so in a time of war, much more than a presidency will be lost.

Hugh Hewitt is a law professor, broadcast journalist, and author of several books including Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority .

BILLBEARS: [Lincoln] ignored the [Constitution] and destroyed the Republic

HUMINT: Thomas Jefferson compared slavery to holding a wolf by the ears. He knew the country would eventually let the wolf go and be bitten. He wrote extensively on the subject. Lincoln was profoundly impressed with the works of Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence did not support the Southern position once the concept of slavery had been abandoned somewhere in America. What happened when the first slave state became a free state? That meant that there was national schizophrenia over the idea of citizenry, liberty and slavery. In light of that and the prewar history I don't think slavery was a peripheral issue at all. North-South reconciliation in the post-war period cast the abolitionists as a marginal issue after the war. They rewrote history to establish some measure of normalcy but that wouldn't come for decades... The echoes of American slavery are still evident in contemporary American society. The wound will take time to heal completely, if it can heal completely.

In terms of your Constitutional argument, any State among the United States has certain characteristics. A prime, if not the most important characteristic, is to remain a state under any and all circumstances. Let's fast forward and consider your logic. Consider a majority of Muslims in Michigan were to institute Sharia law in place of the existing State Constitution. What does your interpretation of the Constitution suggest you do? All of the rights of the citizens in Michigan, guaranteed to them by the Bill of Rights, are meaningless under Sharia law. To protect the integrity of the Bill of Rights for all Americans inside and outside Michigan, the President of the United States would be obligated to protect the rights of the non-Muslim minority. What if the majority Muslims did not drop Sharia as the law of the land but instead decided to secede from our Union? I have little doubt that both you and I would stand shoulder to shoulder and go to war with Sharia Michigan.

Slavery was a side cause at best later in the war to garner support when he had lost all other basis for support. Look to the tariffs.

Look to the quotes of the Southern leadership of the time:

"African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depoulation and barbarism." - South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt, 1860

"The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South... This war is the servant of slavery." - Rev John Wrightman, South Carolina, 1861.

"[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." - Editorial, Jan 1865, North Carolina Standard

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865

As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention

Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?

Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention

This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas

History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

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