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| American Civil War War between the States |
From National Archives transcript of George McGovern and
Sean Wilentz in conversation on Abraham
Lincoln history, current events and related matters
Editing, end comment by
Carolyn Bennett
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I
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n 2009, George McGovern was talking mainly about his book Abraham Lincoln, a book about America’s
sixteenth president (1861-1865), but his thoughts connected significant points
about war: from the American Civil War to U.S. war in Southeast Asia, the Vietnam
War, to the United States’ Second Persian Gulf War, the war on Iraq and its
people.
Self-educated, clever politician hangs on to the Union
(1860-1865)
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| American Civil War Wikipedia |
Abraham Lincoln “was literally a self-educated man,” McGovern said.
“He had one year of formal schooling but in that one year,
he learned to read.” He read and read; he read everything he could get his
hands on. And he thought and thought about what he was reading.
He learned to write and learned to phrase his writings
better than any other occupant of the White House. [Thomas] Jefferson and
Woodrow Wilson [third and twenty-eighth presidents] were possibly somewhere
close to Lincoln in writing. But Lincoln “was the best writer, bar none, that
ever served in the White House,” McGovern said.
He pursued those two talents ─ and they were more than
talents, they were hard-earned achievements. He didn’t have a Ph.D. at
Northwestern. He wasn’t a professor at Princeton. He was a farm boy from
Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and the various places where he lived.
Lincoln was a man with vision for the country, a man who
understood the great enduring values of the nation. He was also a very clever
politician, which is one of the reasons he had the capacity, even though he
hated slavery ─ from the time he was a young man, he loathed the idea of people
being enslaved; but he also knew that half the country didn’t share that
view.
The Union must hold
“That’s why he never joined the abolitionists. He didn’t
think you could, in one fell swoop, end slavery in the United States. He
thought the union had to stay together. And with those things in his mind, he
approached the slavery issue in a compromising fashion.
“He told the South before the Civil War really got under way
that he wouldn’t touch slavery in the South but he wanted them to understand
[that] neither would he permit the introduction of slavery into any new state
that joined the union.”
Better to preserve life, honor (anti-war) as thousands fall
Post-World War II Cold War, Asia’s anti-colonial rising
McGovern said when he was in graduate school at Northwestern
he read several studies on Southeast Asia including Johns Hopkins University
professor Owen Lattimore’s The Situation
in Asia, in which he observed that “in one country after another, the old
forms of colonialism and imperialism were being challenged by grass roots
efforts that cannot be stopped.”
The
more sophisticated the weaponry used against these revolutionary forces, the
more humiliating the eventual defeat because these are forces that cannot be
stopped, that are demanding the right to control their own country.
India was pulling out of the British Empire.
The Dutch were being forced out of Indonesia.
Other
countries had to give up their colonies.
Southeast Asia was seeing the beginning of Ho Chi Minh [one
of the prime movers of the post-World War II anti-colonial movement in Asia and
one of the most influential communist leaders of the 20th century] and his
revolutionary followers. We called them ‘guerrillas’ but they were a group of
young men who were trying to get the French out of Indochina.
They eventually had an army of
10,000 men recruited largely from the villages and the countryside; and when
the French were finally forced out of Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, the
Japanese were the ones [who] did it, and they took their place. They were in
control of that area.
So when we found ourselves at war
with the Japanese, the Ho Chi Minh forces were our allies. Some of my fellow
combat pilots who were shot down over the jungles of Southeast Asia were discovered
by Ho Chi Minh and his forces.
These forces were identified and brought back to American
lines. And, McGovern says, as he watched the Ho Chi Minh movement, he “decided
this was a no-win proposition. We [had] made a mistake in those eight years
backing the French; and had ended up financing 80 percent of the cost of the
French war to reassert [the power of the French] to crush Ho Chi Minh and his
forces.”
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| My Lai Massacre Vietnam War |
United States invasion
Vietnam
McGovern said his “opposition to the war in Vietnam” began
with the knowledge he had “of the historical forces … that were moving out
there in that part of the world.”
He was part of a nucleus of U.S. senators, he says, “that
began the anti-war movement” after the
deaths of “58,000 young Americans, needlessly killed and sacrificed, by people
who were making bad judgments about how to handle the revolutionary forces out
there.”
Though he had gained respect in the country for having taken
what he called a life-changing turn, McGovern said, he was also “widely assailed
for being soft on communism.”
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| 2003 Iraq bombed by U.S. |
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| 2012 Birth Defects in Iraqi children |
Iraq destroyed, thrown into chaos, occupied, hundreds of
thousands dead and displaced
Iraq “had a dictator in charge who was a first-class S.O.B.”
Not the happiest situation, McGovern said, but the US. Invasion threw the
country into chaos.
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| Homeless in Afghanistan |
The United invaded a stable country, “smashed most of the
infrastructure of the country, killed probably a couple of hundred thousand
Iraqis, and lost nearly 5,000 young Americans.”
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| U.S. Drone bombs Somalia |
Yet the theory persists: “well, we’re there, anyway, and we
can’t leave until there’s a stable situation.” But the truth is, “They had a
very stable situation when we invaded the country.”
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| World War I |
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T
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his inhumanity of man seems endless.
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| World War II |
Failure to resolve disputes of the First World War
(1914-1918) gave rise to the Second World War (1939-1945), which left 40,000,000–50,000,000
people dead, the bloodiest conflict and the largest war in history. In a few
years of post-World War II, more unresolved conflict, an “unease” in the
Americans and British with the Soviets, gave rise, beginning in 1947 and 1948,
to the Cold War: a war “waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts
with limited recourse to weapons”; an open “yet restricted rivalry” between the
United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies.
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| Cold War |
The years since 1947 have suffered a “norm” in war, unending
wars, between western countries (with expedient allies and a compromised United
Nations) and other sovereign lands anywhere to the east and south of the United
States, Britain and Europe.
And in the face of incessant violence, the Nobel committee
this year has awarded to the European Union comprised of countries at war its
Peace Prize; as it did in 2009 to U.S. President Barack Obama after he had
promised during his presidential campaign to bomb Pakistan and has, during the
four years of his presidency, bombed, threatened, occupied, destabilized, and displaced
peoples and nations of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Bahrain, Yemen,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and others.
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| Presidential candidates 1972 Shirley Chisholm George McGovern |
The light in all
this is that every now and then there comes in the march of human history a
visionary with courage to speak publicly and for the long term against wars of
aggression or the harm man does to man. If we look closely, we might find some
linkage or political lineage between McGovern and Lincoln.
Sources and notes
Interview posted at National Archives: Senator George S.
McGovern, political figure, veteran, and historian spoke on February 12, 2009,
about his book, Abraham Lincoln. In conversation with McGovern was moderator
Sean Wilentz, editor of the Times Books American Presidents series, editor of
McGovern’s book, author of The Rise of American Democracy, and a Princeton
University professor.
At the 2009 event McGovern Adrienne Thomas introduced
McGovern as author/senator George McGovern, a Midwesterner, former U.S.
Senator, presidential candidate, veteran, and historian who had earned his
Ph.D. in American History and Government at Northwestern University; served as
ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization; and a
recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Noted at the National Archives and Records Administration
site “The views and opinions expressed in the featured programs do not
necessarily state or reflect those of the National Archives and Records
Administration, the National Archives Experience, http://www.archives.gov/nae/news/featured-programs/090212McGovern-transcript.pdf
Britannica notes
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Whig in Congress
“During his single term in Congress (1847–1849), Lincoln, as
the lone Whig from Illinois, gave little attention to legislative matters. He
proposed a bill for the gradual and compensated emancipation of slaves in the
District of Columbia, but, because it was to take effect only with the approval
of the ‘free white citizens’ of the district, it displeased abolitionists as
well as slaveholders and never was seriously considered.”
New sectional crisis, Lincoln reemerge, rises to
statesmanship (Whig becomes Republican)
“In 1854 [Lincoln’s] political rival Stephen A. Douglas
maneuvered through Congress a bill for reopening the entire Louisiana Purchase
to slavery and allowing the settlers of Kansas and Nebraska (with ‘popular
sovereignty’) to decide for themselves whether to permit slaveholding in those
territories.
“The Kansas-Nebraska Act provoked violent opposition in
Illinois and the other states of the old Northwest.
“It gave rise to the Republican Party while speeding the
Whig Party on its way to disintegration.
“Along with many thousands of other homeless Whigs, Lincoln
soon became a Republican (1856).
Lincoln and Douglas
“Before long, some prominent Republicans in the East talked
of attracting Douglas to the Republican fold, and with him his Democratic
following in the West. Lincoln would have none of it. He was determined that
he, not Douglas, should be the Republican leader of his state and section.
“Lincoln challenged incumbent Douglas for the Senate seat in
1858 [and lost] but the series of debates they engaged in throughout Illinois
was political oratory of the highest order.
“Both men were shrewd debaters and accomplished stump
speakers, though they could hardly have been more different in style and
appearance … Lincoln’s prose and speeches were eloquent, pithy, powerful, and
free of the verbosity so common in communication of his day.
“The debates were published in 1860, together with a biography
of Lincoln, in a bestselling book that Lincoln himself compiled and marketed as
part of his campaign.”
Abolition, Slavery, Races, Union (Lincoln and Douglas)
“In their basic views, Lincoln and Douglas were not as far
apart as they seemed in the heat of political argument.
“Neither was abolitionist or proslavery.
“But Lincoln, unlike Douglas, insisted that Congress must
exclude slavery from the territories. He disagreed with Douglas’s belief that
the territories were by nature unsuited to the slave economy and that no
congressional legislation was needed to prevent the spread of slavery into
them. In one of his most famous speeches, he said:
A
house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe the government cannot
endure permanently half slave and half free.
“[Lincoln] predicted that the country eventually would
become ‘all one thing or all the other.’
“Again and again he insisted that the civil liberties of
every U.S. citizen, white as well as black, were at stake. The territories must
be kept free, he further said, because ‘new free states’ were ‘places for poor
people to go and better their condition.’
“He agreed with Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers,
however, that slavery should be merely contained, not directly attacked. In
fact, when it was politically expedient to do so, he reassured his audiences
that he did not endorse citizenship for blacks or believe in the equality of
the races.
‘I
am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social
and political equality of the white and black races,’ he told a crowd in
Charleston, Illinois.
‘I
am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor
of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.’
There is, he added, ‘a physical difference
between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two
races living together on terms of social and political equality.’
“Lincoln drove home the inconsistency between Douglas’s
‘popular sovereignty’ principle and the Dred Scott decision (1857), in which
the U.S. Supreme Court held that Congress could not constitutionally exclude
slavery from the territories.”
Lincoln’s senate loss to presidency
Though he lost the senatorial election to Douglas, Abraham
Lincoln gained national recognition and soon began to be mentioned as a
presidential prospect for 1860. He was the sixteenth president serving from
1860 to 1865.
CIVIL WAR (American)
American Civil War (also called War Between the States,
1861–1865), fratricidal four-year war between the federal government of the
United States (the Union) and 11 Southern states that asserted their right to
secede from the Union.
HO CHI MINH
Ho Chi Minh (original name
Nguyen Sinh Cung, also
called Nguyen Tat Thanh, or Nguyen Ai
Quoc, b. May 19, 1890, Hoang Tru, Vietnam, French Indochina, d. September 2,
1969, Hanoi, Vietnam: founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its
successor, the Viet-Minh (1941), and president from 1945 to 1969 of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).
As the leader of the Vietnamese nationalist movement for
nearly three decades, Ho was one of the prime movers of the post-World War II
anti-colonial movement in Asia and one of the most influential communist
leaders of the 20th century.
VIETNAM
U.S. Vietnam War (1954–75, called the “American War” in
Vietnam or, in full: the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”): a
protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and
its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of
South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.
The Vietnam War was also part of a larger regional conflict
(Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States
and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.
IRAQ
U.S. Iraq War (also called Second Persian Gulf War): 2003 -
I.
War conventionally fought (March–April 2003): a
combined force of troops from the United States and Great Britain (with smaller
contingents from several other countries) invaded Iraq and “rapidly defeated
Iraqi military and paramilitary forces.”
II.
War’s longer second phase: a U.S.-led
hostilities and occupation of Iraq “opposed by an increasingly intensive armed
insurgency”
World War II and Cold War
WORLD WAR II involved virtually every part of the world
during the years 1939–1945.
The principal belligerents were the Axis powers—Germany,
Italy, and Japan—and the Allies—France, Great Britain, the United States, the
Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China.
The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy
20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I.
The 40,000,000–50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II
make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.
COLD WAR
The Cold War “waged on political, economic, and propaganda
fronts, with limited recourse to weapons,” was/is an open “yet restricted
rivalry” that developed between the United States and the Soviet Union, and
their respective allies, after World War II.
Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the
close of World War II, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States
and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other begins to
unravel and by 1947–1948, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to
western Europe has brought those countries under American influence and the
Soviets have installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe, the Cold War
has solidified.
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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