Is Abraham Lincoln the next American historical figure to be cancelled by the left? Protesters in Portland tore down a state of the venerated President and some statues of him are targets for removal in other places. Edward Achorn is an award-winning journalist and author of a new book “Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln,” and he joined Newell on the program Thursday morning to discuss why Honest Abe is suddenly controversial.
“This has been a real head-scratcher for a number of folks,” Newell began. “What do you think is actually driving this?”
“These are pretty radical left-wing groups that want to destroy American history as a way to undermine the people’s faith in the system we have here,” Achorn said. “I’m very strongly with Lincoln that America is the last, best hope of Earth, a place where freedom exists and flourishes, and I think people who want a lot of government control of the populace don't like the symbols of that, and Lincoln is one of the greatest symbols.”
“It begs this question for me, and I’m curious what you think those people might articulate about it,” Newell continued. “Who in American history is acceptable to them? And that individual, whoever they may be, surely they have flaws as well, right?”
“Right, and it’s always changing!” Achorn said. “I think George Washington, who I regard as the consummate American, the man we owe everything to, if you read about him, he fought so hard for this country, sacrificed an immense amount. He owned slaves but was opposed to slavery, he freed his slaves. In terms of his time period, he was immensely ahead of his time, very moral, very self-sacrificing, and people want to tear down him now. So it’s more than these people and what they did, it's an attempt to tear down the symbols of America.”
“So when we talk about the study of our history, in spite of all of its flaws, what happens? Do we just lose all sense of historical perspective?” Newell asked. “Are we judging people back then by contemporary standards? That doesn’t seem very fair to me at all.”
“That's the trend in a lot of modern academic history,” Achorn answered. “The sort of less-academic people like myself, a longtime journalist, are writing history that people want to read because it doesn’t take that approach. I think you judge people by the standards of their time. Everyone is flawed, nobody is perfect. If you isolate something from the past, you don’t always understand all the things that were going into it at the time. Lincoln, for example, did not oppose slavery when he ran for President the first time. He opposed its expansion, said it was immoral, but wanted to protect it where it existed. You could hate him for that, but he was at the forefront of his time in trying to say that slavery is wrong, and we don’t want to expand it. It's very important to look at people in context. Of course our country is not perfect, but when you look at the sacrifices made to win us the incredible benefits we enjoy today, there’s nothing more important that reading history and understanding that.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
