REVIEW: ‘Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment’ by Allen C. Guelzo
What if Lincoln had lived? That is a question about which historians have given conflicting answers. Allen Guelzo suspects he would have guided the sections along a path toward reconciliation, while guaranteeing voting rights and citizenship to freedmen across the South, in a manner that would have foreclosed the sectional hostilities that arose as a consequence of actual Reconstruction policies. Perhaps: Counterfactual cases are difficult to adjudicate. It is one of the nation’s great tragedies that Lincoln did not live to put his stamp on postwar policies.
He never saw or imagined the things we take for granted in our modern style of living. He never saw an automobile or an airplane, or imagined driving to the office or the shopping mall, or flying from coast to coast in a matter of hours. Nor did he see a television or sit in a movie theater, or imagine satellites in orbit around the earth. He did not see but might have been amused by what passes for debate in modern political campaigns. He could not conceive of "wonder drugs," which (had they been available) might have saved his son from dying of pneumonia. He could not imagine sitting in front of a computer surfing the internet or playing video games, or working for a company engaged in artificial intelligence. He was fortunate never to have seen an atomic bomb obliterate entire cities. The rhythm of our lives today would appear to him as something taken from a science fiction novel.
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James Piereson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Photo by US National Archives/Getty Images