Freedom Liberty and the American Way…

From Every Patri­ot Grave

By Robert Mor­ri­son, FRC’s Senior Fel­low for Pol­i­cy Stud­ies

Abra­ham Lin­coln had no chance to pre­pare for war. He took the Oath of Office on March 4, 1861. In his Inau­gur­al Address, the new pres­i­dent appealed for peace. He end­ed with this elo­quent paean to patri­o­tism.

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.

That same day, Gen. Win­field Scott gave him a mes­sage from the besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston har­bor. Capt. Robert Ander­son informed his Wash­ing­ton supe­ri­ors that he could not hold out against the rebels much longer. Lin­coln was unpre­pared for the artillery bar­rage that opened up on Fort Sumter on April 12^th, but he said, “we have the war upon us.”

When the Great War broke out in Europe one hun­dred years ago this July, the Unit­ed States was not involved. Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son urged Amer­i­cans to remain neu­tral in thought as well as deed. He would say: “there is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.” He kept the Unit­ed States out of the Euro­pean war for almost three years. In that time, he might have pre­pared this coun­try in case we found our­selves drawn in despite our prayers. He chose not to do so.

Wilson’s Sec­re­tary of War, New­ton D. Bak­er, actu­al­ly took pride in the fact that we were unpre­pared when war final­ly came in 1917. “I delight in the fact that when we entered this war were not, like our adver­sary [Ger­many], pre­pared for it and invit­ing it. Accus­tomed to peace, we were not ready.”

Such state­ments seem ridicu­lous to us today, or should. But they are not much dif­fer­ent than hear­ing our cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense say we can­not afford the defense we may need. So, in the face of mount­ing threats abroad, he is force­ful­ly advo­cat­ing deep­er cuts in our defense bud­get. At least he is doing some­thing force­ful­ly.

It is not that this admin­is­tra­tion is whol­ly unpre­pared for con­flict. They are con­duct­ing a vig­or­ous kul­turkampf (cul­ture clash) against believ­ers with­in our all-vol­un­teer ser­vices. They seem to think that if they can­not make our adver­saries fear us, at least they can put the fear of God into the god­ly.

The poignant sto­ry of the paint­ing Gassed, by John Singer Sar­gent needs to be stud­ied and reflect­ed upon. Sar­gent was one of the most famous Amer­i­can artists of his day.