Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Although the two men differed on a very important issue, each admired the other and acquitted themselves politely throughout. Congress explicitly gave the President the powers that he had exercised and won the dispute. But Dixon had also won, and upheld the law as it existed until it was changed.

He later provided a copy to Hezekiah Niles, February 5, 1819 which is the source of the quotation since Henry never mentioned it.

The President was distressed to hear that the Confederates had captured some horses and a Union general. He seemed more distressed about the horses. A copy of this quotation was given to Colin Powell when he was promoted to brigadier general.

To a great extent, the same is true in our modern world.

Lincoln and the Union leaders were still hopeful of ending the rebellion and getting things back to a pre-war footing economically. At this point they were trying to preserve components of the Southern Economy at no small cost. As that hope was shown to be futile, the Total War strategy of Grant and Sherman prevailed to the satisfaction of men like Opdycke. That actually ended the war quickly, but the Southern Economy was devastated in the process.

While Northern industry was one of the major factors of the Union winning the Civil War, it took some time to ramp up civilian-controlled production. This historical experience, and that of WWI (soldiers had to drill with brooms for rifles) were two of the major influences on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to begin to produce arms and ammunition before we were actually at war. Preparedness has been an American policy ever since with even the Republicans who castigated FDR as a warmonger for spending money on the military in peacetime became the preparedness hawks and moved to the opposite end of the political spectrum on defense spending,

The “surge” was the short term injection of a large number of American combat troops into Iraq when the Iraq War was going badly. President George W. Bush, who at the urging of Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives had invaded Iraq and while the invasion went well the administration botched the so-called peace and America was in the midst of a Iraqi civil war. Bush went ahead with the surge despite the advice of the Joint Chiefs. What makes the quotation particularly interesting, beyond the fact that the senior military advice was ignored, was that the President had always campaigned on the principle that the President should listen to the senior American Military officials on military tactics and strategy. He like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and other presidents found that the military leadership perspective was often very narrow and not even militarily infallible. The Iraq War turned in our favor after the surge albeit that there have been arguments since then as to whether or not the surge was the reason or was it due to other factors which occurred at the same time. Probably, all were factors.

There are many theories as to why McClellan was so reluctant to attack even when he had more guns, more men, and better field position, but he almost always came up with a reason. Some historians believe that he really sympathized with the South and wanted the Union to end the war by allowing slavery to continue in the South. McClellan disliked Lincoln and even ran against him for President in 1864. Halleck was McClellan’s superior as General in Chief, but he could not get McClellan to attack any more than the President or others could. When Lincoln fired McClellan, things turned around with the Army of the Potomac.

This is one of the best summaries of Lincoln’s early strategic thinking about the war. Unfortunately for him and the country, his generals were all trained in tactics rather than strategy. And the then modern world placed industry, logistics, and economics on a par with battlefield tactics. Until Generals Grant and Sherman were elevated to higher command, there were no military leaders who thought about the war in overall strategic terms. Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman in a sense created the first strategic approach to modern warfare.

President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam Diem was a creature of the Central Intelligence Agency. An anti-Communist Christian in a Buddhist county, the CIA engineered his rise to power, created his political party, provided him with cash to bribe other Vietnamese politicians, and paid for all the propaganda so he would “win” the Presidential elections. However, he abused the Buddhists, was thoroughly corrupt and ran a corrupt administration, but worst of all from the American point of view, he was unable to motivate the South Vietnamese population to fight the Communists. He reached the point where he was more of a liability, and the Central Intelligence Agency engineered a coup d’etat to remove him from power and replace him with a President more to our liking. (See {634540}.) Another reason this quotation is important is that it demonstrates the involvement that the Attorney General had with foreign and defense policy. Normally the Attorney General has nothing to do in these areas and is not even in the loop. But Robert F. Kennedy was also the President’s brother, and his advice was sought by President Kennedy on almost all matters. He was probably the most influential attorney general in American history.