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The Michigan Socialist | Features | History

269 words

By MARTIN SCHREADER
Editor, The Michigan Socialist

AMERICAN HISTORY is a history of extreme contradiction. It is, at once, a history of revolutionary progress and barbaric backwardness.

Often times, these contradictions are bound together throughout whole episodes of history. However, there are also moments when one of these two stands out so prominently as to overshadow all that surrounds it.

Many radicals, revolutionaries and socialists are content to dwell almost exclusively on the history of barbarism and backwardness we see throughout American history. But to do so is as problematic and politically restraining as concentrating equally exclusively on the progressive elements.

That is why it is sometimes necessary to take a step back into history, to see what it is that shaped both the positive and negative elements of "the American experience" -- and, most importantly, how they helped create each other.

IN THE AUTUMN of 1863, the United States was feeling that a new breath of life had been taken. Only six months before, the armies of the rebel Confederate States of America had successfully kept the forces of the United States from winning any decisive battle.

In the western areas, Confederate forces had kept the armies under the command of Ulysses S. Grant from driving into Mississippi and taking the key city of Vicksburg. In the east, the Army of Northern Virginia had managed to thwart all the plans of the Union, culminating in the rout of the Army of Potomac at Chancellorsville.

These victories led the Confederate military and political leaders to once again stage an invasion of the northern states. Their view was that, if the Confederate forces could defeat those of the Union north of Washington, they could force a peace settlement on the basis of independence.

The strategic goal for the Confederacy was the seizure of Harrison, Pennsylvania, and an attack on Philadelphia.

But the plan was executed poorly, with Confederate cavalry -- the "eyes and ears" of the army, in an age without aircraft or electric-powered reconnaissance -- being too far from the main force to communicate. The result was that Confederate forces were dragged into a battle with a Union force of unknown size and ability.

For three days, Union and Confederate forces slugged it out on the lush fields and rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania. When the battle was over, close to 53,000 soldiers -- both Union and Confederate -- had been wounded or killed.

The battle of Gettysburg was a decisive Union victory -- arguably the first decisive victory the Army of the Potomac had won since the Civil War began.

The day after the last shot was fired in the battle, Lee began withdrawing his forces from Pennsylvania. On that day, July 4, Grant received the surrender of the garrison at the city of Vicksburg, thus re-opening the Mississippi River to Union traffic and trade.

IN THE FOUR MONTHS following the battle of Gettysburg, Union medical teams combed the battlefield for the remains of the tens of thousands of soldiers who died. Almost immediately after the battle, the first cemeteries were laid out for the fallen soldiers.

By autumn, those first gravesites had grown into a sprawling cemetery, taking up dozens of acreage. In addition, the Gettysburg battlefield had been set aside as an historical site by Congress (a lesson they learned after speculators bought up the land where the first battle of the War, around Manassas, Va., was fought).

In November, the National Cemetery at Gettysburg was ready for opening to the public.

The main speaker at the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery was Edward Everett, one of the best known and respected orators of the age. Everett spoke for nearly two hours (which was common at the time), invoking the cause of the Union and praising the bravery of the men (and women) wounded and killed.

After Everett finished, another well-known speaker stood and addressed the crowd. This person had been invited almost as an afterthought, and was not prepared to make a long and studied speech.

He spoke only 269 words, and only for about two minutes.

After he was finished, there was only light applause. The speaker, when he sat down, told his confidant that he felt his speech had been a failure.

Indeed, he was not the only one. The Chicago Times, for example, called the speech "flat" and "dishwatery." The pundits that haunted the European press felt similarly, chiding the speaker for his "gift of mediocrity."

However, many others disagreed, including Everett himself, who wrote the speaker a note expressing his hope that he "had come as close to the central meaning of the occasion in two hours as you had in two minutes."

Today, almost 140 years after that cold, windy November day in 1863, only those 269 words remain as something other than a footnote in American history.

WHEN ABRAHAM LINCOLN delivered his Gettysburg Address, the Civil War had been transformed from a constitutional conflict over Union to a revolutionary conflict over the meaning of freedom. The clash of social and economic systems, which lay at the heart of the Civil War, had yielded a socially progressive movement.

It came as little surprise to those who were most affected by the success or failure of the Confederate rebellion, the millions of Africans held as slaves, that the War had moved in this direction. They knew, before the first shot was fired, that the War would be about the freedom or slavery of African peoples in America.

But, for the majority of pro-Union Americans, it took years of hard lessons to even begin to understand what the meaning of the Civil War was about.

Among this mass of pro-Union Americans can be included Lincoln. When he first ran for president in 1860, he expressed many of the same white supremacist views that were common for the time, and, while he personally thought slavery immoral, he only called for slavery's containment to areas where it existed.

For abolitionists of the day, Lincoln was a "cold" politician, "tardy" to the idea of slave liberation, and, in the words of one prominent anti-slavery orator, "a first-rate second-rate man."

But as the War progressed, Lincoln displayed his ability to learn and develop politically. By the summer of 1862, he was ready to issue a preliminary emancipation order (which, incidentally, did not free a single slave). The stalemate at Antietam in September 1862 gave Lincoln the "victory" he needed to issue it.

Throughout 1863, he continued to explore the role that slavery played in the maintenance of the Civil War and Confederacy. Spurred on by abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips, Lincoln began to see the need to transform the War into something more -- to understand the "higher object" for which the forces of the Union fight.

Since the middle of 1862, Union forces had hired runaway slaves as laborers and teamsters. The Emancipation Proclamation allowed for the enlistment of Black men as soldiers, but it took another six months before the first Black regiment saw action at Ft. Wagner, in South Carolina.

At the same time, Lincoln had to fight off criticism that he was, in fact, transforming the War. "You say you won't fight for Negroes," Lincoln wrote to his critics in 1863. "Some of them seem willing to fight for you."

Clearly, his opinion was changing. All ideas of repatriating Blacks to Africa, repeating the process that led to the formation of the African state, Liberia, were dead. It was now a question of establishing a formal equality between Black and white within the borders of the United States.

THIS IS THE CONTEXT in which the Gettysburg Address was delivered, and it gives us insight into why he chose the words he did.

Lincoln consciously chose to link the struggle for this equality to the Revolution of 1775, which freed the American states from British colonialism. By doing so, he declared quite openly that this War was a second, democratic revolution aimed at resolving the problems that had remained from early years of the Republic.

For Lincoln, the question was no longer one of preserving the Union, but rebuilding it. That is, it was no longer a case of "the Union as it was," as was the line of his opponents; now, it was a case of the Union as it must be, purged of its "original sin" of slavery.

This was the meaning behind Lincoln's call for the United States to undergo "a new birth of freedom." If the Union was to be restored, it would not be based on the old forms of power and privilege. A fundamental transformation was necessary.

At the same time, though, he did not wish to detract from the struggle that had been waged by 90,000 Union soldiers at Gettysburg, and the nearly 2 million Union soldiers who served throughout the conflict. In his view, the men (and women) who died for Union had done more to resolve the outstanding problems of America than any other group of people -- including Lincoln and his government in Washington.

But the democratic revolution Lincoln led was not going to be carried out solely by the soldiers in blue. It was up to the people of the United States to do its part and do what is necessary to see that the democratic principles that now guided the Union's effort in the Civil War were not wasted -- that "these dead shall not have died in vain."

In a sense, Lincoln's speech was meant to make Americans aware of the great tasks that were to confront them in the following years, as War became Reconstruction, and African Americans, freed from the bonds of slavery, were to be brought into the body politic.

THE NOTED WRITER, William Faulkner, once quipped that history is not "was," but "is." That is, history is not a disconnected series of events, dates and names, but an ongoing experience. What has been done throughout "history" affects us always; what we do today, will affect the "history" and contemporary experience of those who come after us.

For us, as citizens of the United States, living and being affected by that history, the Civil War is not "was," but "is." The Civil War did not end with the surrender of the Confederate armies, or with the end of Reconstruction. The Civil War continues, and we have a role to play in it.

This is not mere hyperbole or poetic flourish. The Civil War was more than a military or constitutional conflict. It was a political debate about freedom -- what it means, who it applies to, and, most importantly, how far it extends -- that was resolved, momentarily, through the medium of shot and shell, at the tip of a bayonet.

But the debate did not end. It continues today. As long as there is inequality in society, the Civil War continues. As long as there are those who exploit, and those who are exploited, the Civil War continues. As long as there are those who oppress, and those who are oppressed, the Civil War continues.

The only difference is in the form of slavery underlying the "irrepressible conflict;" instead of chattel-slavery (humans as property), it is now wage-slavery (humans as commodities).

As the 21st century unfolds, we are once again confronted with an "irrepressible conflict" that can only lead to one of two outcomes: revolutionary liberation or reactionary barbarism.

Socialists worthy of the name stand firmly on the ground of revolutionary liberation from wage-slavery, exploitation and oppression. Even though we advocate such a revolution take place in the most peaceful and non-violent way possible, it is still a revolution we seek, as opposed to petty reforms that give capitalism a makeover.

Opposed to us are all those who wish to maintain the vicious circle of war, repression and exploitation -- from the lowliest manager on the workplace floor to the highest circles of power, not the least of which is the existing government.

(And it should not be taken as mere coincidence or merely "bad politics" that so many of those in the highest seats of power look to the rebel Confederacy as ideological inspiration.)

Fighting for a Third American Revolution, which seeks to abolish wage-slavery and the class system that perpetuates it, is how we, today's generation, play our part and "take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion" -- how we make history "is."

The Civil War continues; on this 140th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, we must all recommit ourselves to bringing about "a new birth of freedom" and carry forward the pledge of Lincoln, and his generation of radical and revolutionary democrats, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."