Bush faces peace or freedom

Published 12:00 am Monday, March 10, 2003

President George W. Bush's dilemma of combating the threat of Iraq specifically and terrorism more broadly, on the one hand, and achieving world peace and meeting the challenge of growing anti-war feelings in this country and Europe, on the other, finds some precedent and parallel earlier in American history. After a brilliant career as commander of the Union Army during the Civil War and a popularity that might have been greater than Abraham Lincoln's, U.S. Grant became president. Like Lincoln, two administrations before (with the disastrous administration of Andrew Johnson between), Grant was confronted by two principal political challenges.

Lincoln had begun his administration determined to do whatever it took to preserve the Union. This was so important to him, he initially gave scant attention to the issue of slavery. This grew, however, as he learned more about its actual practice, and for him it was not at all a political issue but entirely a matter of morality. He did very much to free the slaves, and several acts were even more productive than his famous 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. He did everything he could, but he always felt constrained by his immediate goal of preserving the Union. He was frank about this. If he had to choose between freeing the slaves and preserving the Union, it would be hands down the latter.

However, Lincoln was killed before he could stabilize the Union and left it tottering. He had defeated the South militarily, but he hadn't changed its mind and especially its mind set. Andrew Johnson very nearly gave it all up in his cowardly refusal to take decisive action against southern popular ring leaders and political radicals. U.S. Grant inherited from Johnson a most precarious Union; now he faced Lincoln's dilemma.

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Like Lincoln, he wished both to secure full freedom and opportunities for freed slaves and all black people but found it politically impossible to do both at once. Grant was confronted by the development of the KKK in South Carolina and of the White Leagues in Louisiana. Even the troops he sent to New Orleans under command of Gen Philip Sheridan could not control the mobs of radical white Republicans who threatened to topple the state government in opposition to its inclusion of blacks.

When Grant made his bid for the Republican nomination, he concluded: "Let us have peace." As his administration developed and events unfolded, however, he found he had to make a choice: immediate peace or eventual full rights for blacks. Like Lincoln, he wanted both but could not have both and was forced to choose between them. While Lincoln feared prolonging the war, Grant's fear was continued violent conflict, if not a second Civil War. If the presidents secured peace within the country, he could turn attention to the next priority.

Many historians now wonder if at least Grant might not have done better to follow through on the moral principle of rights for blacks and taken the risk of another war. Sometimes, they reason, peace is not an acceptable option when moral issues are at stake.

George W. Bush today faces a hauntingly similar choice. On the one hand he can wage war against terrorism and Iraq (or Iraq and terrorism) at the cost of putting peace off until later. On the other hand, he can cease and desist and settle for such "peace" as we now have and wait for an opportunity to address terrorism at a more politically propitious time.

Would people who now demand "peace" and oppose war with Iraq, then, say that U.S. Grant was correct in putting peace ahead of rights for black people? Would they say that 70 years of Jim Crow, consequent to Grant's "peace," was worth it? Have we learned this little from history?

Dr. Wallace Alcorn's commentaries appear in the Herald on Mondays.