Tuesday 23 June 2020

Review: Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln-Edward Achorn- Hardcover – March 19. 2020


"The long and short of the business seems to me to be that a war of this kind must be conducted on revolutionary lines, while the Yankees have so far been trying to conduct it constitutionally."

letter from Marx to Frederick Engels August 7, 1862,

"This huge mess of traitors, loafers, hospitals, axe-grinders, & incompetencies & officials that goes by the name of Washington."

Walt Whitman


"Up to now, we have witnessed only the first act of the civil war – the constitutional waging of war. The second act, the revolutionary waging of war, is at hand."

Karl Marx

"If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.

Abraham Lincoln.

Edward Achorn's new book is a superb narrative-driven account of the Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. Achorn's descriptive powers separate his book from a very crowded market. 

As Gordon S Wood[1] correctly states "It is hard to imagine anyone saying anything new about Abraham Lincoln, the most written-about figure in American history. But Edward Achorn has done it. No one has ever placed Lincoln's Second Inaugural in such a full and rich context as he has. Achorn recreates the sights, sounds, smells, and the feel of everything, and his Lincoln was never more real. This is the work of a superb imaginative historian."

Achorn introduces the reader to a growing number of prostitutes, Confederate spies, newspaper reporters, women with low moral esteem and power-crazed politicians who swirled around Washington at the time of Lincoln's speech. Unknown and famous people came to Washington- to hear Lincoln's second inauguration. The poet and journalist Walt Whitman is given a significant amount of space in the book as is African American leader Frederick Douglass. Douglass called the speech "sacred effort".

Achorn gives Walt Whitman significant space in his book. Whitman, who was a journalist, poet and nurse based in Washington. Whitman's most famous work is his poetry collection Leaves of Grass. The book caused such a scandal that one  critic demanded Whitman "be kicked from decent society as below the level of a brute." Achord writes that Lincoln enjoyed Leaves of Grass and read it to cure is often bouts of depression.

Perhaps the most villainous of all the complex characters swirling around Lincoln at the time was the actor John Wilkes Booth who would later assassinate Lincoln. Booth is second only to Lincoln in the amount of space allotted in the book. Given Booth's historical importance, this is entirely natural. Achorn's portrayal of Booth at times takes the form of a novel, a difficult art to maintain which Achorn does while not dropping academic standards.

As James Macpherson so eloquently writes "This richly detailed account of the events surrounding Lincoln's second inaugural address focuses on the many notable and obscure personalities present in Washington as the Civil War neared its end, including such opposites as Frederick Douglass and John Wilkes Booth, whose lives intersected with Lincoln's in dramatically contrasting ways."

The inauguration was set amidst a raging civil war that by March 1865, had killed 700,000 Americans and left an indelible mark on American society."The rebels…could not at the same time throw off the Constitution and invoke its aid…. Decisive and extensive measures must be adopted…. We wanted the army to strike more vigorous blows. The Administration must set an example and strike at the heart of the rebellion."[2]

It has been claimed by most civil war historians as the most important inaugural address in American history. In just 701 words Lincoln issues a stunning attack on slavery: "If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said f[our] three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether".[3]

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of the book was Achorn's almost God-given gift for explaining the psychological impact of the war and the struggle against slavery and how it impacted participants psychological well being particularly that of Lincoln. As the French minister in Washington wrote "[h]is face denotes an immense force of resistance and extreme melancholy. It is plain that this man has suffered deeply." The president's secretary, John Hay, noted that "the boisterous laughter became less frequent year by year; the eye grew veiled by constant meditation on momentous subjects".[4]

Achorn also notes that "Lincoln's hard life had left him with thick scar tissue over his psychic wounds" from his upbringing, yet the war "had reawakened his thoughts about God's role in this world of suffering".

Achord rejects the strong theme in current historiography portraying Lincoln as a cynic motivated by purely economic or political gains. This theme was promulgated by the recent New York Times 1619 project.[5] Achorn's principle view of Lincoln flies in the face of recent attempts by the New York Times and its 1619 Project to present a racialised view of US history. The journalist from the Times presents Lincoln as just another white racist indifferent to the fate of the slaves. It denies the extraordinary revolutionary significance of the American Civil War.

While noting that slavery was an economic and political issue, Lincoln believed its abolition was the right thing to do. As his Second Inaugural address expresses ", One-eighth of the whole population were coloured slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localised in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it". With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations".

One of the most commendable aspects of Achorn's book is that he allows Lincoln to speak for himself. It is not said enough that Lincoln was a superb writer. One look at the Gettysburg Address confirms the eloquence and power of his prose "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."[6]

As Achorn points out in the book, Lincoln's inaugural address went deeper in that it started to reflect on the causes of the war. As Achorn writes, Lincoln "would not bask in the glory of recent, hard-fought military victories, or present a detailed plan for reconstruction. He would speak about human depravity, about the hideous sin committed by both sides, and about the justice of God's infallible, implacable.

The black abolitionist Frederick Douglass who attended the inauguration had in the past been heavily critical of Lincoln's ambiguous attitude towards slavery, but on this occasion, he applauded Lincoln's condemnation of slavery. As Achorn writes "He came to understand that Lincoln was a statesman who had to time his actions to what the public would accept, and I think that is a very poignant thing to see". Douglas believed it was "a sacred effort."

While Lincoln's speech was indeed stateman like he was conscious of the need to tie his political fortunes with that of military ones.  Achord correctly gives credit to Major General William Tecumseh Sherman whose victories on the battlefield enabled Lincoln to win a second term as president. Of particular importance was the taking of Atlanta by Sherman. This victory changed the popular mood, and Lincoln won re-election by a significant margin.

Although Achorn does not dwell too much on the international aspect of the American Civil war and Lincoln's role in that war, it is worth examining what the most important observer from the standpoint of the working class had to say on the war.

When Karl Marx heard of Lincoln's re-election on behalf of the First International Workingmen's Association he sent congratulations to Lincoln. "They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to a lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world."[7]

Marx's analysis of the causes of the civil war still holds up today He writes "when an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution", and maintained slavery to be "a beneficent institution", indeed, the old solution of the great problem of "the relation of capital to labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the cornerstone of the new edifice" — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause".[8]

While it was not possible for Achorn to look at every possible aspect of the Lincoln presidency, some older historians have drawn parallels between Lincoln and other leaders of civil wars. One such comparison was the leader of the English revolution, Oliver Cromwell.

The historian, Isaac Foot, in a lecture given in 1944 amid the Second World war, drew far-reaching parallels between Lincoln and Cromwell. Foot writes "That is the mark of each man. He was there at the particular time when his special gift seemed to be adapted to the critical occasion that called for the contribution which, as far as we can see could not have been made by any other man of his day. The epitaph of each man might very well have been-"after he had served his generation, by the will of God, he fell on sleep".[9]

The working class could learn a lot from each man. As the great Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky said "Cromwell was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding back at anything. This must be learnt from him, and the dead lion of the seventeenth century is in this sense immeasurably greater than many living dogs."[10]The same could be said about Lincoln.

To conclude, Achorn does offer a new and fresh approach to this complex period of American history. The national crisis he writes about bears a striking resemblance today. The significant book sales mean Achorn's work has resonated with modern-day readers.

As the American working-class comes into a direct struggle with its bourgeoisie, it will need to armed with an understanding of America's revolutionary past. It will need to form its own "Ironsides".

Its first step must be to put an end to the removal of statues of Washington, Lincoln and Grant. As Joe Kishore writes "The removal of monuments to the leaders of America's revolutionary and civil wars has no justification. These men led great social struggles against the very forces of reaction that justified racial oppression as an incarnation of the fundamental inequality of human beings".[11]







[1] Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire of Liberty
[2] Battle Cry of Freedom: James M. McPherson
[3] Transcript of President Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865)- www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page=transcript
[4] Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln-Edward Achorn- Hardcover – March 19. 2020
[5] See The New York Times 1619 project: A racialist falsification of US and world history-wsws.org
[6] Lincoln delivered the 272 words Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
[7] Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America-Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams
January 28, 1865
[8] Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America-Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams
January 28, 1865
[9] Oliver Cromwell and Abraham Lincoln: A comparison: a lecture delivered before the Royal Society of Literature on April 19th, 1944-Isaac Foot
[10] Where Is Britain Going?
[11] Hands off the monuments to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Grant!- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/22/pers-j22.html