On November 6^th, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16^th President of the United States, taking the oath of office on March 4^th, 1861. He was a Republican, and the mere fact of his election caused the secession of seven southern states on February 9^th, 1861, establishing the Confederate States of America. In his inaugural Address, he said the following;

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Clearly, many in the Confederacy did not believe him, with several states going so far as to secede from the Union before Lincoln was even able to take the Oath of Office. In today’s day and age, that would be similar to the newly elected Democrats in the House and Senate proclaiming that they would not support President Bush with a troop surge in Iraq, the week before he even had the opportunity to recommend it, explain what his plan was, or make the case for why it was necessary.

Everything that Lincoln said and did certainly backed up his Inaugural assertion that he had no interest in abolishing Slavery. Lincoln prosecuted the war against the Confederacy because he did not believe in the right of the Southern States to secede from the Union, and was prepared to fight a war to save the Union.

So why, almost a hundred and fifty years later, do many Americans believe that the main purpose of the Civil War was to end Slavery?

After all, its not like the Emancipation Proclamation, issued January 1^st, 1863, nearly two years into the war only ended slavery in “Those States in rebellion against the Union”, while leaving those Negroes in the north still safely ensconced in Slavery. Oh that’s right, it did. Not so good for the Million plus Negro Slaves living in the North at the time.

Historians can and do disagree as to Lincoln’s personal feelings about slavery and how much they changed over his life, but certainly what is clear is that when the war started, in Lincoln’s thinking, it was solely about saving the Union, whereas almost two years later, in late 1862, Lincoln added the abolition of Slavery as a war goal. Once again, the modern analogy would be that while George W. Bush started the war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein was seeking Weapons of Mass Destruction, several years later, the goal had evolved into creating a stable democracy in the Middle East.

In both cases, an evolution of understanding does not constitute any disingenuousness on the part of the President, either now or in the past, but rather it allows for a true Man of Vision to recognize and attain a loftier goal than he may originally have envisioned or even thought possible.

We call that leadership.

What then of the opposition; for wherever one person seeks to lead, others will naturally resist that vision, regardless of how right or just it may be, simply because it is not their own.

In 1860 as in today, the opposition to the Republican Party was the Democrat Party, which at that time was further split into two factions.

The War Democrats strongly supported the war to save the Union but were equally strongly critical of Lincoln’s conduct of the war, with criticism growing with each Union Military Setback and further loss of life. Alternately, the Peace Democrats, or “Copperheads”, blamed the Civil War on the abolitionists who they felt were trying to impose “Racial Equality” on the nation, and while they claimed to hope that the Union could be saved, they felt that the use of Military Action was not justified, would never restore the Union, and had become a national tragedy that need to be ended through a negotiated peace, even if that meant an Independent Confederacy.

At the Democratic Convention of 1864, the ascendancy of the radical Copperheads was so great that the party adopted a platform branding the war a failure. In Congress, the Copperheads strongly opposed every military bill, and went on to demand a peace settlement at any cost, leading the Republicans to allege that the Copperheads wanted the Confederacy to win the war.

Other arguably treasonous actions in which they engaged were; trying to persuade Union soldiers to desert; talking of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and escape; and meeting with Confederate agents and taking their money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever possible, which many in the Union felt prolonged the war by encouraging the South to continue fighting in the hope that the North would eventually abandon the struggle.

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?

In another interesting parallel to modern times, the Copperheads, who looked down on Lincoln as an unintelligent rube with despotic tendencies also had control of numerous important newspapers, through which they tried to influence American public opinion against the President specifically, and Republicans in general.

Truly the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Or put another way, as was said by Philosopher George Santayana, who was born the year that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

To paraphrase in a more hopeful and less negative sense (bearing in mind that Santayana was a Harvard Professor), I would say that “those who are prepared to learn from the past successes of others are better positioned to repeat them.”

In looking at the lessons that America should clearly have learned after the Civil War, it would appear that George W. Bush and his administration have learned the value of leadership and commitment to ideals coupled with a willingness to stay true to the overall goal of victory, in spite of the Political cost.

Alternately, what many in this Country have not learned is that however good you may think your intentions, and however great our military may be compared to that of our enemies, if you make your enemy believe that as a Nation you are divided in your willingness to prosecute a war, you will only serve to prolong that war as your enemy tries to wait you out in the hopes that you lack the resolve to ultimately see it through.

I will leave it up to others to debate what, if anything, the Democrats have not learned from the past and what mistakes they are doing their best to repeat.