Lincoln: Man or Myth

We had a good final night for the class, examining the latter stages of the Civil War from roughly Fredericksburg on. The discussion of Lincoln's inability to find the right commander for his army and his attempt to stay out of the military side of the war led to a myriad of Union commanders. McClellan, Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade were all called to lead the Army of the Potomac...with mixed success. They either couldn't beat General Lee or had what Lincoln called a case of the "slows" and wouldn't follow Lee's army. Lincoln's movement from emancipation as a war aim to a moral campaign was discussed and was shown vividly in our examination of his short, but powerful speech at Gettysburg. The Gettysburg Address was only moments long and Lincoln wasn't even the featured speaker, but while he said that no one would long remember what he said that day...he was very wrong. This short speech has been immortalized in American History and culture...along with his moving Second Inaugural Address...are two of the finest pieces of oratory in our short history. In the end, we took that short ride with Lincoln and Mary to Ford's Theatre and came to understand John Wilkes Booth's plan and his motives. Our final discussion of Lincoln's legacy to this country and his mortality...a man who was imperfect as we all are, but one who was dedicated to his principles and those that he believed defined this country. Many people find different things in Lincoln, but I have found a man who can be respected and appreciated. A man who is not a giant or a genius, but an honest man who did the best he could to accomplish the tasks set before him...though he himself often doubted his ability to do so.

The Post-American World

The class yesterday focused on Zakaria's description of how the Non-western World fell behind the Western World after the Renassiance in Western Europe. I think his point about focusing on GDP per capita as a measurement, rather than just GDP, makes sense as we try to examine the modernization of societies and economies. The other point that he makes in the chapters examined for this lesson deals with the definitions of "western" and "modern", which many would argue are the same basic idea. He uses quotes from Samuel Huntington, who believes the two are very different, to support his position that they can overlap but being western does not necessarily make a nation modern and being modern does not necessarily make a nation western. While most nations that he would consider western are also modern, the two terms do not always have to overlap. Zakaria uses two examples from the Non-western World, China and India, to accentuate his arguments. This week we looked at China and how it has changed and grown and modernized...specifically in the last 30 years. When I published the economic figures for China since 1978 (economic growth of 9% on average per year for the last 30 years - doubling the size of their economy every eight years) a number of people just shook their heads in amazement. It will be interesting to see if Zakaria is right in his belief that China is not looking to become the other superpower in another Cold War, but seeks to take its place in the world by hard work and economic growth without the trappings of superpower interference. His example of the World Bank refusing to loan Nigeria the $8M they needed to fix their train system because of questions about corruption in the Nigerian bureaucracy...and China stepping in to give them a $9B loan to rebuild the entire train system but with no strings attached and no scolding. The World Bank represents the interests of the Western/Modern World trying to discipline a non-western, developing country...while China represents the quiet giant of the non-western world helping a developing country make itself more able to compete in the world market. How will such actions reshape the political and economic landscape of our world? How will we as a nation deal with a country which approaches its relationships with others in such a way? Will we be willing to break our normal paradigm and not lean again on our blatant power politics? Hope to see many of you next week for our last class in this series. We'll look at his second example, India, and then bring this interesting book to a conclusion.

2009 Annual Conference Report

Lincoln: Man or Myth

I apologize for going over time tonight, sometimes I don't pay enough attention to the clock. I know that quite a bit of time tonight was spent on the war and not specifically on Abraham Lincoln, but I believe that it is hard to understand the momentus nature of what he had to do if you don't understand the massive, violent nature of the Civil War. I again owe Royce Ann a debt of gratitude for sharing that four minute video of the war with me...I believe it is easier to understand the war and its flow if you can visualize the general nature of the actions and that video does a great job of showing that flow. It is normally difficult for people to comprehend that it took until August 1862 before the Union got a victory that Lincoln could use to launch the Emancipation Proclamation, but that is the reality. Up until then the Union had lost at every turn... Royce Ann mentioned driving home that it helped to see how successful Grant and Sherman were in the West and I realized that I had left out recognition of Henry Halleck. While Grant and Sherman were the operators in the western theater, the strategic decisions were made by Halleck. Because of this success, he was brought to Washington by Lincoln to be the Commanding General and supervise George McClellan until McClellan was fired. He and Lincoln then brought Grant and Sheridan east later and they carried the fight to Lee...in the interim Lincoln went through a variety of commanders for the Army of the Potomac...Burnside, Hooker, Meade...all whom eventually lost the president's confidence. Next week we'll look at Lincoln's relationship with Grant and the last two years of the war. I promised you the links for the sites I mentioned so here we go...the four minute video can be found at http://www.idkwtf.com/videos/latest-videos/the-civil-war-in-four-minutes , the Civil War maps from West Point are at
http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/american_civil_war/index.htm , and the Teaching Civil War with Technology site is at http://blog.teachthecivilwar.com/ . I hope that you are enjoying yourselves...remember, if you have questions you can post them here and I'll answer them as soon as possible. The picture at the top is a famous Matthew Brady photo of Lincoln and McClellan (the little squirt looking at President Lincoln) at the Army of the Potomac's camp on the site of the Battle of Antietam.