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The nation suffered severe military debacles in 1862 that could have ended the Civil War, but the year also saw President Abraham Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
It’s become fashionable among some pundits to write off American democracy as some sort of lost cause, irretrievably shattered by President Donald Trump’s serial depredations.
“I’m not even sure how it survives as a functioning democracy,” wrote one New York Times columnist, all but declaring the United States, as we know it, to be on its last legs.
I share the concerns, but not the despair, even as the TV downstairs, as I write this, carries breathless coverage of hundreds of unhinged Trumpkins storming the U.S. Capitol in a historic display of abject idiocy.
You’d have to wonder where we would all be now if our forebears packed it in after Pearl Harbor, threw in the towel amid the Great Depression, or gave up the fight the Union suffered military debacle after debacle in 1862 at the hands of the Confederacy, an entity founded to preserve human bondage for perpetuity.
History shows our nation has not just survived arguably bleaker times but came out stronger for it.
1862
It’s hard to think of a darker time for our country than 1862, when the Union cause was at its nadir and the future of the United States truly hung in the balance.
A year of battlefield reverses ended with General Ambrose Burnside’s foolhardy series of assaults that December on Confederate–held heights above Fredericksburg, Maryland. The result was a one-sided bloodbath, with more than 12,500 Union soldiers falling during the course of the battle, including nearly 150 from 28th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, also known as the “Irish Brigade.”
Yet 1862 was also the year that President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation after an invasion of the North by Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee were checked – just barely – at Antietam.
That short, 700-word document transformed a war to preserve the unity of the nation into a crusade to end slavery and setting the stage for the Union’s eventual comeback and triumph.
It was nothing less than the “nation’s apocalyptic regeneration,” according to Frederick Douglass.
1932
Seventy years later, the viability of the United States as a going concern was once again in doubt.
The Great Depression had just cross the three-year mark in the run-up to the 1932 presidential election. Industrial production had fallen by half, unemployment topped 20 percent and the hungry and homeless could be found on urban street corners and in rural hamlets alike.
Things were so desperate, in fact, that Stalin’s Soviet Union looked like a better alternative to some, with 53 prominent writers and intellectuals like Langston Hughes throwing their support to the Communist Party’s candidate for president, William Foster.
Yet that November saw Franklin D. Roosevelt win the presidency.
The liberal patrician, derided by some as an intellectual lightweight, proved to be a master politician, his character immensely strengthened through an epic battle with polio and anchored by a strong moral compass and a quiet but firm religious faith.
By mid-1933, Roosevelt had pushed through Congress the first wave of New Deal reforms that helped rally the country and provide basic protections for workers, seniors and the most vulnerable.
He also very likely saved capitalism as well.
Americans checked a rising tide of isolationism led by Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh in 1940 by returning Franklin Roosevelt to the White House and rearming, paving the way for victory over genocidal, fascist foes.
1940/1941
Things certainly couldn’t have looked bleaker than in June 1940, when Nazi Germany overran France in six weeks and appeared poised to invade Great Britain and capture the world’s most powerful fleet.
Yet possibly the gravest threat to the survival of democracy came from within the United States itself.
America’s potential industrial and military might was going to be vital to defeat Hitler.
However, it had a pathetically undermanned army of just under 190,000 in 1939, roughly the size of Portugal’s land forces.
And efforts to mobilize the nation were opposed by a foe far more formidable than Trump: aviation pioneer, popular hero and Nazi–admirer Charles Lindbergh.
Decorated by Hermann Göring in 1938 with the Service Cross of the German Eagle, Lindbergh regaled tens of thousands in speeches across the U.S. as the lead of the quite–familiar–sounding America First Movement.
Lindbergh railed against Roosevelt’s efforts to funnel desperately needed military to England, in danger of invasion and collapse from the Nazi assault, at-times dipping into some of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories then popular among the domestic far right and Hitler’s genocidal regime.
Roosevelt, despite his brilliance, was hardly a sure bet for an unprecedented third term in an election that was ultimately a battle for the soul of the nation.
Yet he managed to pull off the improbable, winning the election and finagling through Congress the Selective Service Act – a.k.a. the draft – as well as a badly needed rearmament program that helped the U.S. – and Britain, via Lend Lease – beat back the Nazis, Italian Fascists and the Japanese imperialists once the nation suffered a crushing blow at Pearl Harbor a year later.
Weighing 2020
There’s no debate that 2020 was a grim year, with more than 361,000 deaths from the coronavirus, an epidemic made 10 times worse by Trump’s brazen, pig-headed incompetence.
It’s beyond disturbing that there is a sizeable section of the American electorate – 30 percent or more – that eagerly imbibe Trump’s constant lies including the biggest one of all, that he was cheated out of reelection by massive electoral fraud.
And by the way, 787,000 people filed for unemployment benefits last week.
But don’t forget: Even in our darkest times, there have been rays of hope, and 2020 was no exception.
Scott Van Voorhis
Scientists across the world collaborated on an historic effort that produced several effective COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year, while voters rejected Trump at the ballot box by a margin of more than 7 million.
And in the wake of last week’s shameful riot on Capitol Hill, Republicans powerbrokers like Sen. Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence finally seem to be breaking with the Trump madness, joining more principled colleagues like Sens. Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney.
We will just have to wait and see. But with a little bit of luck in the days and months ahead, 2020 may very well turn out to be an historic turning point.
What’s your take?
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
