DECEMBER 31, 1861:
George
Templeton Strong notes in his journal at the close of the year:
“Poor old 1861 just
going. It has been a gloomy year of trouble and disaster. I should be glad of
its departure, were in not that 1862 is likely to be no better. But we must
take what is coming. Only through much tribulation can a young people attain
healthy, vigorous national life. The results of many years spent in selfish
devotion to prosperous, easy money-making must be purged out of our system
before we are well, and a drastic dose of European war may be the prescription
Providence is going to administer…”
1861 has seen the Union fracture and States fall away like
broken teeth. The seceded States have set up a strange doppelganger of a nation
that claims adherence to the true intent of the American Revolution, uses its
altered symbols, but seems to have no vision for the future---only for an
idealized past. This new nation has plunged itself, unnecessarily but perhaps
inevitably, into a contest with what it calls the “old Union.”
As for the “old Union”---it too has no vision for the
future. Its people see a rebellion, its leaders fight against a rebellion, but
besides shoehorning the seceded States back into a relationship with the “old
Union,” no one seems to have grasped the fundamental nature of the conflict in
which the two halves of the American Experiment are now locked---not even
Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the most visionary of leaders. For now, his war is one
of limited aims, both in conception and in execution. The coming year will
alter that…it will alter much. But for now, “poor old 1861 just going.”
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