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| Alistair Cooke, British Author & Historian |
The monumental serenity and gentleness of Lee have provoked
many sentimental plays and reams of idolatrous prose. But there might be a fine play in the second
moral – and political – conflict he had to resolve: that of never drawing his sword ‘save in
defense’ and yet accepting the command of the Southern forces. In any case, he went back to Virginia to
fight for a principle that, ironically, Lincoln himself had enunciated better
than anyone, thirteen years before Secession.
“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the
right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that
suits them better.’
The nub of the conflict between North and South was the
definition of ‘any people, anywhere’ (how about the people of Virginia?). To Lincoln, it came to mean exclusively ‘the
people’ of the United States. The South
took him at his earlier word and presumed that any region as closely knit by
culture and economics as the South could claim to be a ‘people’ free to assert
the right of self-determination. But
Lincoln, in his first proclamation of the war, had declared the ‘combination’
of the Southern states to be illegal.
And to this day, the historians and popular sentiment have overwhelmingly
agreed with him. Yet, it seems to me, we
have all been bedazzled by the Gettysburg Address, a small masterpiece of
rhetoric of very dubious logic. Its most
famous phrase is very close to political nonsense. Quite apart from the anarchy implied in any
government ‘by the People,’ there remains the ticklish question of how many
people or states or ethnic minorities constitute a ‘people’ who may justly wish
to govern themselves. Woodrow Wilson
held no such bland assumptions about the whole being more sovereign than its
parts when he created nations out of ethnic minorities yearning to be free of
government by the Austro-Hungarian empire.
I’m afraid we must conclude, with Justice Holmes, that the winner is
always right.
--Alistair Cooke, Alistair Cooke's America
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