Latest news with #Lincoln'sPeace
Forbes
12-04-2025
- General
- Forbes
Letting Your Rival Up Easy
Painting of The Peacemakers, showing Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Porter aboard the River Queen As the Civil War was concluding, Abraham Lincoln met with his top generals and staff aboard the River Queen in Williamsport, Virginia, in late March 1865. Part of this meeting is depicted in the famous painting The Peacemakers. When discussing how to treat the defeated South, Lincoln said that the Union must 'let them up easy.' 'It's a term from wrestling where the idea is once you've got your victory, both sides sort of know who won, who lost, and you stand up and you basically show grace to the defeated person,' historian and Lincoln biographer Michael Vorenberg told me in an interview about his book, Lincoln's Peace. 'You shake hands, you don't laud your victory, you don't rub it in.' This behavior was something Lincoln demonstrated 'as a young man on the frontier in Illinois [and how] he won his way into the hearts of the community, especially with the tough guys.' The tall and rangy Lincoln, strengthened by physical labor, was an expert wrestler who was not afraid of bullies. And when he bettered them, he would not "beat them up" but instead 'letting them up easy.' Sadly, Lincoln never saw it through because he was assassinated weeks later. However, the lesson of going easy on your adversary rings true today. When our culture is so riven with division, those who can find the strength to rise about the heat of the moment can do much to ensure future peace, even collaboration. That is, enforce and earn peace through kindness. So, taking Lincoln's words as inspiration for a lesson plan, here are some suggestions for finding ways to act upon 'the better angels' of our nature when we find ourselves at odds with those who hold views different from our own. Get the lay of the land. Determine the issues. Look for the root causes of problems and actions that have worked in the past. Ask questions. Understand what people want. Engage them in conversation. Spend more time listening than speaking. Listen to what people are not saying. So often, in intramural squabbles, people have their favorites. For this reason, many people will be reluctant to speak out. Therefore, do not expect straight answers. Look inside for how people react in your presence. Invite everyone to participate. Strive for win-win solutions. Yes, there will be winners, but find ways to make everyone feel welcome and give them a voice in shaping the future. One of my favorite quotes from Winston Churchill is: 'In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will." When we are emotionally invested in our beliefs, it can be difficult to disentangle emotion from reason. It takes practice and discipline to quell how you feel inside and how you project yourself. In short, the struggle may be hard, but when you win, act with the spirit of grace and goodwill. Click here to watch the full interview with Michael Vorenberg.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Book Review: 'Lincoln's Peace' offers lessons for these times from the Civil War
'Lincoln's Peace' offers a pair of fascinating what ifs. Had the Union maintained a larger and stronger post-Civil War occupying army, could it have banished all the residual slavery practices and prevented the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups that crawled out from the Confederacy ruins? And how different might the outcomes have been in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan had we thought harder about what we were going to do to resolve the issues that triggered armed conflict? As Michael Vorenberg notes in 'Lincoln's Peace,' the end of a war does not necessarily signal the outbreak of peace. But we Americans are an impatient people; we like to smash our way to victory and go home as quickly as possible, buoyed by the belief that we have vanquished evil, installed goodness and inspired World War Il liberation-of-France-level jubilation. Never mind that scenario hasn't happened since; we haven't paused enough to learn. And the Civil War is the conflict that keeps on teaching. In January, for example, Knopf published Richard Carwardine's 'Righteous Strife: How Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union,' which explores the roles of faith-based nationalism during the Civil War and traces Christian nationalism to present-day issues such as abortion and gender identity. The most potent lesson in Vorenberg's 'Lincoln's Peace' is to carefully consider all the issues at stake in planning what to do after the fighting stops. Abraham Lincoln wanted to 'let them (the defeated Southern states) up easy' but as Vorenberg shows in great detail, enough unrepentant Southerners merely switched to other tactics to keep Blacks powerless, in poverty and subjugated in every way to the white majority. Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, fervently wanted to declare victory and move on and he prevailed in that strategy, reducing the occupying Union Army force until it was ineffectual. If the book has a fault, it's the meticulous detail and profusion of names, even of minor characters who could be named by title alone. In an interview, Vorenberg said he wanted a timeline and list of characters, but publisher Knopf demurred. (Note to Knopf: Take his advice next time.) Without dwelling on it, "Lincoln's Peace" mentions multiple times another failure during the Civil War that reverberates today: Newspapers during the Civil War often presented starkly different accounts of the war, depending on whether they published in Southern or Northern cities. Now 160 years after the Civil War, many of our fellow citizens accuse our legacy news media of also contouring their reporting to mesh with their own institutional viewpoints and those of their perceived audiences. Vorenberg and Carwardine's books remind us of the cost in lives in failing to resolve — peacefully and diplomatically — arguments with deep social and moral implications. A clear conclusion is that it will take Lincoln's ideals and general decency to get us out of the strife we Americans have created for ourselves today. ___ AP book reviews:
Associated Press
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Book Review: ‘Lincoln's Peace' offers lessons for these times from the Civil War
'Lincoln's Peace' offers a pair of fascinating what ifs. Had the Union maintained a larger and stronger post-Civil War occupying army, could it have banished all the residual slavery practices and prevented the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups that crawled out from the Confederacy ruins? And how different might the outcomes have been in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan had we thought harder about what we were going to do to resolve the issues that triggered armed conflict? As Michael Vorenberg notes in 'Lincoln's Peace,' the end of a war does not necessarily signal the outbreak of peace. But we Americans are an impatient people; we like to smash our way to victory and go home as quickly as possible, buoyed by the belief that we have vanquished evil, installed goodness and inspired World War Il liberation-of-France-level jubilation. Never mind that scenario hasn't happened since; we haven't paused enough to learn. And the Civil War is the conflict that keeps on teaching. In January, for example, Knopf published Richard Carwardine's 'Righteous Strife: How Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union,' which explores the roles of faith-based nationalism during the Civil War and traces Christian nationalism to present-day issues such as abortion and gender identity. The most potent lesson in Vorenberg's 'Lincoln's Peace' is to carefully consider all the issues at stake in planning what to do after the fighting stops. Abraham Lincoln wanted to 'let them (the defeated Southern states) up easy' but as Vorenberg shows in great detail, enough unrepentant Southerners merely switched to other tactics to keep Blacks powerless, in poverty and subjugated in every way to the white majority. Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, fervently wanted to declare victory and move on and he prevailed in that strategy, reducing the occupying Union Army force until it was ineffectual. If the book has a fault, it's the meticulous detail and profusion of names, even of minor characters who could be named by title alone. In an interview, Vorenberg said he wanted a timeline and list of characters, but publisher Knopf demurred. (Note to Knopf: Take his advice next time.) Without dwelling on it, 'Lincoln's Peace' mentions multiple times another failure during the Civil War that reverberates today: Newspapers during the Civil War often presented starkly different accounts of the war, depending on whether they published in Southern or Northern cities. Now 160 years after the Civil War, many of our fellow citizens accuse our legacy news media of also contouring their reporting to mesh with their own institutional viewpoints and those of their perceived audiences. Vorenberg and Carwardine's books remind us of the cost in lives in failing to resolve — peacefully and diplomatically — arguments with deep social and moral implications. A clear conclusion is that it will take Lincoln's ideals and general decency to get us out of the strife we Americans have created for ourselves today.
