June 22,
2020
Most
mornings find me seated on the patio, steaming, fragrant, coffee in hand, and
resting in my lap, Jill LePore’s THESE TRUTHS a History of the United
States. I alternate between reading and
connecting with the world beyond words on a page-- watching for high flying
jets tracing contrails across the sky (very few in these times), smaller planes
arriving and departing from our local airport, the Embry-Riddle training planes
circling the airport in lazy circles, bird song, the color of the sky, shape of
clouds, purple sage pushing forth flowers, moles crawling tentatively from
holes before popping back in, rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks foraging in our
yard and quail, always quail. But this
morning was special, my first sighting of quail babies, scurrying across the hillside
beyond our wall, fragile yet brave as they perform their first reconnaissance
of their new world.
And then I
begin reading where I left off yesterday morning. Within a few lines, I see the date June 22,
1860 exactly 160 years ago from today.
On this day the Democratic Party split in two—northern and southern
factions. And so began the dissolution
of our Union--fragile from the start-- and the inexorable, or so it seemed, march
to war.
Stephen
Douglas won the nomination from the northern faction of the Democratic Party
and John Breckenridge for the southern faction.
The southern faction pro slavery and the northern against the southern
push to extend slavery beyond the south.
Lincoln
running on the Republican ticket of course won.
(Please note the Democratic and Republican Parties of the 1860’s are
very different entities from their 21st century namesakes.) Six
weeks later South Carolina seceded and the lower south all the way to Texas
followed. In February 1861 the Confederate States of America formed with former
Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis as president--“a man the Texan Sam Houston
once called ‘as ambitious as Lucifer and as cold as a lizard.’”
Lincoln won
every northern state including all six states where the Lincoln/ Douglas (not
Stephen but rather Frederick) debates took place and all four states in which
black men could vote.
As I read
these paragraphs I am struck by the similarities we face as our presidential
election draws ever closer. Like the
1860’s headlines proclaim our divisions, protests scream our differences, and
social media explodes with violent rhetoric.
In the 1860’s, without radio, the Internet and social media, the speed
of communications depended on word of mouth, newspapers and the fairly recently
created telegraph system. While speed
and density of communications of those times were no match for today, still
ideas did spread. Citizens gathered by
the thousands, standing for hours in the sun, to hear the Lincoln/Douglas
debates, reporters reported, citizens wrote letters to family and friends, and
in time diary entries would find their way into history books like the one I am
reading. But today the speed of dissemination
of information is breathtaking. The
phone, radio, even broadcast and cable TV cannot outpace the Internet
characterized by anonymity and intimacy by turns.
The
information age has, like almost any construct, proven to be a double edged
sword. It serves both the ignorant and
the informed, the stupid and the intelligent, the compassionate and the
heartless, the criminal and the lawful, the bigoted and the tolerant, those who
want to return and cling to the past and those who want to move into and
embrace the future, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Three hundred
pages into a 782 page history of our nation, I find on almost every page that
if names and dates were changed I could be reading some action, some idea, some
turn of phrase that has sprung forth from headlines just in the past few weeks. The lack of logical thinking, the
self-serving greed, the manipulation of facts, the suppression of free speech,
the hatred, the short term thinking, the lack of empathy, continues
unabated. And if one looked only at
headlines one would assume we’ve made no progress. The promise of the fine words in our
Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, written by flawed men remains
unfulfilled.
Progress? Yes, Of course. But when citizens line up against one
another, when the police and National Guard are called, when words fail us,
when debate devolves into shouting matches, when our leader encourages
violence, the breaking of the law, and sounds like a five year old when he
speaks or writes, I have to wonder if the country that was built on high flying
ideas, broken by slavery and blood, and rebuilt again by promises that in
practice have left so very many of us without—I have to wonder—where will be on
June 22, 2021? Will our crumbling
institutions continue to weaken while a criminal occupies the White House? Or will we, like the survivors of our Civil
War, awaken to the horrors of the past 4 years, elect someone with a brain,
experience and compassion and find a year from now that we are healing? Will we then recognize the opportunity we’ve
given ourselves by casting a vote for progress and keep an eye on the future as
we deal with the present, recast our views, open ourselves to our neighbors
next door and in the next nation over and around the world?
In the
distant past tribes came together in trade and created alliances. That pattern has continued and yet we still
remain so afraid of the Other. America,
under Trump, has withdrawn from the world.
He sits in the oval office pouting, 
arms crossed, lower lip out, eyes
narrowed and eyebrows lowered as he rants about anything that threatens his
self-image. He is incapable of a cogent
thought, of speaking in full sentences with multi-syllabic words, of simply
looking beyond the self.
As I read
the following excerpt today from Lincoln’s first Inaugural address, considered
the most eloquent in American history, I could not help contrasting it in my
mind with Trump’s performance in Tulsa this past Saturday. Lincoln writes:
We
are not enemies, but friends. We must
not be enemies. Though passion may have
strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from
every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all
over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Abraham
Lincoln, March 4, 1861 First Inaugural
Address
As Lepore
points out in the next line, “The better angels did not prevail. Debate had failed.” Even the date, March fourth/forth, seemed to
presage the war on the horizon. Words became
weapons and too soon weapons replaced words on battlefields from North Dakota
to Florida, from Pennsylvania to the New Mexico Territory.
Battle of Gettysburg
Today we are
once again at war with ourselves and now we battle a faceless enemy, too small
to see with the naked eye, but powerful enough to bring this nation to its
knees. Our misplaced pride in ‘rugged
individualism’, our belief in a concept of freedom that says we may behave in
ways that bring illness even death to those around us—these views combined with
a president who foments violence among us and behavior counter to advice from
public health officials account for protests across the country and almost
120,000 deaths from the virus--at this writing.
George Washington Wears a Mask
to Protect Himself and Others
If this
failure of a president, Donald J. Trump, continues past Jan. 2021, we could be forgiven for
thinking that the promise of 1776 has evaporated.
The
Democrats of 1860 split in two, thus undermining any chance at beating
Lincoln. Thank God they did so. But the Democratic party of 2020 must not
succumb to any actions that favor the return of Trump to the White House. Let’s make sure moving vans show up next
January to rid the White House of this execrable excuse for a human. Do not throw your vote away even out of
principle. There is too much at stake to
get your panties in a twist. Democrats
and Independents, and every color of party out there, unite and vote Trump out
of office.
I leave you
with these words as does Dr. Lepore on the last page of her remarkable book…
If we should perish, the ruthlessness
of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength
of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the
struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or
history
but by hatred and vainglory.
--Reinhold Niebuhr
The Irony of American
History
1952
Be Safe; Be Well
Gail Mangham June 22, 2020
While editing this blog on July 31, 2025 I have no words other
than to say I ride the whiplash pendulum of history
from despair to hope--over and over.
