Russell Conwell, a Civil War captain, revered Abraham Lincoln. But unlike most, he met the man face to face. Twice.
In his book, “Acres Of Diamonds,” Conwell recalled visiting Lincoln at the White House to plead for the life of a young soldier who had been sentenced to death.
“I never was so afraid when the shells came around us at Antietam as I was when I went into that room that day,” Conwell wrote.
Lincoln had already heard about the case and assured Conwell that he’d never sign an order to shoot a boy under 20.
“How is it going in the field?” Lincoln then asked.
“We sometimes get discouraged,” he said.
“It is all right,” said Lincoln. “We are going to win ...”
Conwell then stumbled on Lincoln’s soft spot. After learning that the young captain grew up on a farm, the president relaxed a bit, threw his leg up on the corner of his chair, and chatted about farming.
He became “so every day, so farm-like,” wrote Conwell.
“No man ought to wish to be President of the United States,” Lincoln said. “And I will be glad when I get through. Then Tad and I are going out to Springfield, Illinois. I have bought a farm out there and I don’t care if I again earn only twenty-five cents a day. Tad has a mule team, and we are going to plant onions.”
Lincoln picked up some papers, looked at Conwell and said, “Good morning.”
“I took the hint and got up and went,” he wrote.
When Conwell saw Lincoln again, he was inside a coffin in the East Room.
“When I looked at the upturned face of the murdered President,” he wrote, “I felt then that the man I had seen such a short time before, who, so simple a man, so plain a man, was one of the greatest men that God ever raised up to lead a nation on to ultimate liberty.”
Lincoln’s longing for a “normal” life made him “so simple a man,” as Conwell put it.
But what made him “one of the greatest men that God ever raised up” was his resolve to put off a normal life once peril came.
“We could have avoided all this suffering [civil war] simply by shrinking from strife,” Teddy Roosevelt said, 34 years later.
Yet “shrinking from strife” for decades was how the whole slavery conundrum piled up on Lincoln.
Just like today, the reckless belligerency that pushed things to extremes came mostly from one side: pro-slavery radicals.
They feared nothing.
They burned freed slaves alive and hanged anti-slavery whites. They organized mobs to burn churches, kill editors, and throw printing presses into rivers. White-collar radicals winked at the mayhem and rigged juries, judges and elected officials to favor pro-slavery criminals.
Fearing that the union would snap, the good guys answered lawlessness mostly with debate, compromise and fiery speeches. The union snapped anyway.
But it wasn’t the first shot on Ft. Sumter that ignited war; it was one side’s utter refusal to accept Lincoln as president. America’s choice was its red line.
“Both parties deprecated war,” Lincoln said at his second inaugural in 1865, “but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.And the war came.”
That’s happening today. One side defiantly “makes war” rather than let the nation thrive.
And they fear nothing.
They organize mobs to intimidate and destroy things. They threaten and assassinate political opponents. They rig elections. They jerry rig the country with radical mayors, radical attorneys general, radical governors and radical officials who advocate for criminals.
For votes, they opened our borders and used taxes to transport, house, and feed millions of illegals. As Trump works to reverse the catastrophe, mobs resort to violence while white-collar radicals wink at the mayhem.
Worst, they utterly refuse to accept Trump’s legitimacy.
Like the Confederates, this reckless brand of belligerency has been building for years. During the Bush years, Trump critic Charles Krauthammer coined the sickness as “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” TDS is an offshoot of BDS, he wrote.
Yet, it’s because of good guys like Bush – notorious for shrinking from strife – that intractable problems grew over time and piled up on Trump.
Even if you believe Trump’s craziness is a problem, it’s the sniffles compared to TDS.
As ruthless Democrats wrecked America, the Bush-types never fought back. Ever. They still don’t. Trump did. He was elected because “He fights!” as Lincoln said of the flawed Ulysses Grant.
Yet, Trump could be facing “a task greater than that which rested upon Washington” and Lincoln.
Something awful is in America’s bloodstream: entrenched foreign-born ingrates and home-grown radicals – in and out of office – who work with global “resistance” thugs to destroy America from within.
Civil war? Yeah. It’s not quite kinetic, but we’re definitely on the spectrum. The air is so thick with it because one side extends a hand only to shake a clenched fist. Even when Trump performs political miracles, the zombies keep coming.
So if Lincoln asked today, “How’s it going in the field?”
I’d answer: “We sometimes get discouraged, but it’s alright; we’re going to win.”
Trump is not a president for all times, but miraculously, he’s ideal for these abnormal times. Normal behavior in abnormal times is not only abnormal but insane – like driving the speed limit to a raging fire.
Much like Lincoln, Trump believes the nation is in peril and, as a master of strife, he uses strife to fix seemingly unfixable problems, with no guarantees that he’ll ever have a “normal” life again.
As political psychopaths vow to drive the nation into a dark age when they win back power, ours could be “one of the greatest generations that God ever raised up” when we stand ready to put off “normal” whenever needed and never shrink from strife, so the nation will not perish.