Premonitions
Ford’s Theater is one of those few true “shrines” in our country. It marks a spot of such profound tragedy in our nation’s history, it stands in an august group with Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, and Ground Zero.
When I think of Ford’s Theater, what comes to my mind isn’t the figurative or literal theatrics of Lincoln’s assassination, but of the premonitions Lincoln himself had of his own death. Now I don’t believe in supernatural precognition (folks like Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Jeanne Dixon, and that freakish Jamaican hag from late-night TV make me want to vomit with force and intent), but I do believe folks who are trying to make a significant impact on the world know full well that someone, somewhere, is out to kill them for it.
“About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers, ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.” — A. Lincoln
Now this is, indeed, creepy, but it’s not evidence of the paranormal. Lincoln knew full well that he was waging a war against fellow Americans, a war that not everyone in what remained of the Union supported. He knew that he was violating folks’ rights, that Sherman was burning great swaths of farmland in Georgia and the Carolinas, that hundreds of thousands of draftees were laying dead on the fields from Monocacy to Vicksburg. And he knew that someone, or many someones, wanted him dead. Even though he was doing the right thing, he was stomping on somebody, and that somebody would kill him. How sadly accurate his premonition turned out to be.
A while ago, I listened to an interview of comedian Chris Rock, of Saturday Night Live fame. He’s a brilliant comic. Rough-edged and provocative, to be sure, but brilliant nonetheless (or, perhaps, because of). He clearly rattles cages, but he also makes people think about race, and class, and stupidity, and of other topics equally truthful but irritating. He told the interviewer (and I’ll paraphrase): “when I became famous, I figured I’d be dead.” Not because of drug overdose like other SNL alums like John Belushi or Chris Farley, but because someone would shoot him.
Isn’t that terrible? And I’m sure he’s not the only famous entertainer or politican who thinks that. How many duly-elected Representatives or Senators actually wondered “will I get shot today” when they went to all those raucous “health care town hall” meetings? I would question the sanity of any of them who didn’t think that. And why would they be shot? For trying to give more people health insurance? For being the target of an astro-turf uprising orchestrated by talk radio and billionaire media moguls with their own, selfish, ratings-raising axe to grind?
It’s a sad state of affairs in this country that folks of vision (whether philosophical or political or economic or medical or scientific) can be intimidated into submission or silence not by the power of persuasion or debate or fact-driven decision making, but through threats — real or imagined — of force from the very populace they’re trying to reach. Is this what we have become? Is this what the great democratic experiment has wrought? A society where thoughts and efforts to improve the lot of the nation is met with violence? Are the recent events simply a blip, a blemish on the soul of the country, or are we heading down a steep slope to Somalian anarchy?
Lincoln, of course, didn’t back down. He continued on a path he knew was right. He paid the ultimate price for it. But although the aftermath was rocky, the nation reunited, got on its feet, and became the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.
But now, I wonder. Was it really worth it?
[I don’t have many good pics of Ford’s Theater, so I didn’t post any. All of these are from public domain sources.]
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I really want to let that soak in a bit. If McClellan had acted, the Battle of Fredericksburg would not have happened (2,000 dead). Spotsylvania would not have happened (4,000 dead). Chancellorsville would not have happened (est. 5,000 dead). Chickamauga would not have happened (est. 6,000 dead). The Battle of Gettysburg would not have happened (8,000 dead). Richmond would not have been sacked and looted. New York would not have had its draft riots. Atlanta would not have been burned to the ground. Virginia would not have had its entire countryside scoured by war. And maybe an assassin would not have claimed the life of the greatest President we ever had.
Even though I love the National Park Service and the sites they protect, I have to admit: many of the Civil War sites are nearly undecipherable. You have to really use your imagination to envision the order of battle or the strategic importance of the terrain. It’s hard to imagine a line of Union artillery in a Wendy’s parking lot. What were they firing at, the Avis Car Rental?
After this almost mandatory exchange, I asked the ranger how many people ask her this stupid question every day. “A lot”, she replied. Of course the log cabin at Lincoln’s Birthplace isn’t original. The original one was surely torn down and replaced by the next residents after the Lincolns moved to Indiana (log cabins were not known for their longevity). The ranger did proceed to discuss what was really important: the thoughts and writings of our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln.
We should ask ourselves “why?” Why would a man who presided over the one and only War Between the States (the worst human bloodletting ever witnessed on the North American continent), a man who initiated the first widespread draft in America (leading to riots in New York City and other places), a man who suspended many legal rights (an act used years later as justification for Japanese interment and the Patriot Act), still be so loved by the American people? Not only loved, but perhaps even deified.
But there is another meaning to the word “right”. Lincoln was also the right President at the right time. People tend to forget the mess this country was in before Lincoln. The “slave problem” was a menace, a canker, a tumor on the very heart of America. It ate at the very core of our beloved Constitution. America, a nation supposedly founded on freedom, held hundreds of thousands in thrall, was a nation of hypocrites.
America In Context 