Manifest Destiny Civil War Essay - 1,086 words

In Mexico City there is a mural by Diego Rivera which depicts Hernando Cortez as a one-eyed syphilitic hunchback. What this lacks in historical accuracy it makes up for by faithfully reflecting the artist's attitude toward the conquistadors. We are repeatedly told on public television that Lincoln was a clearly heroic figure. If heroism is measured by the size of the pile of corpses a man leaves behind, this is correct. We must not let our emotions deprive us of objectivity. Lincoln was neither one-eyed, hunchbacked nor syphilitic but on the other hand, he never deserved the name of "Honest Abe." Like some other politicians, maybe all politicians, he spoke with a forked tongue.


Lincoln came to power at a unique time, with a unique opportunity to decide the fate of the nation and of a million of his fellow citizens, who wound up as casualties of the Civil War. There was no lack of counsel. Editor Horace Greeley and a host of others advised letting the seceding states go in peace. More ardent abolitionists were outraged by this suggestion. Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell welcomed a civil war as an antidote to the greed of Northern merchants and the cruelty of Southern slave owners. Outgoing President Buchanan thought secession was illegal, but so would be the use of force to prevent it.


But Lincoln needed no advice. He reversed Buchanan's policy of giving up Southern military posts on demand, and the war was on. How and why was this a rational decision? Of course Lincoln stoutly denied it was to abolish slavery. The four slave states which did not secede had a greater population greater than half that of the eleven states which did.


To proclaim an anti-slavery crusade would substantially increase his problem. As a minority president (from a field of four candidates) his mandate was thin; his party platform did not call for abolition, but merely containing slavery within its present borders. His real motive was manifest destiny, the control of the West and the wealth of the orient beyond. As a lawyer and politician he had worked to authorize rail road bridges across the Mississippi River both to cut off navigation to the South where Midwest farmers depended upon the port of New Orleans as an outlet for their produce, and to provide access to markets in the East.


The big issue confronting Lincoln and the Midwestern business culture with which he associated was whether the proposed transcontinental railroad would run from Chicago to San Francisco or from New Orleans to some point in Southern California and this concern was bound up with control of the expansion of what he called the Slave Power. Since preservation of the union was essential to such control he gladly embraced the opportunity to make himself a dictator, to usurp the power of Congress to raise and equip armies, spend unappropriated funds in the treasury, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, arbitrarily arresting citizens accused of preaching defeatism or advocating peace at any price and denying mail distribution to opposition newspapers he continued as de facto monarch for 77 days. He finally called Congress into extraordinary session after the war had begun. But the war procee ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: lincoln, manifest destiny, civil war, farmers, one eyed

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