“Storm Over The Land: A Profile of the Civil War”, by Carl Sandburg is a story carved mainly from Sandburg’s four-volumes of “Abraham Lincoln: The War Years”, wherein Sandburg tells the dramatic tales of the mega-clash between the North and the South, the military leaders, the battles, the soldiers on both sides fighting for their views, their state, their property. Many Southerners wanted slavery extended into the expanding territories; the cries and actions for abolition growing ever stronger in the North. Sandburg did prodigious research for his works; this 420-page book has an eleven-page index in small print at its conclusion (copyright 1939). The story tells how the “American Union of States was nearly torn asunder through all the storms of passionate divisions of economic, racial, moral, and cultural factors underlying the political climate that came to a head early in 1861 just as Abraham Lincoln assumed the U.S. Presidency”. The war lasted four long years, ending shortly after Lincoln’s reelection, a few months into his second term.
Sandburg gives such an interesting portrait of Lincoln throughout the several years of heart-wrenching events, and quoted many of his folksy anecdotes or parables given in response to queries put to him on diverse issues. Sandburg deftly shows how Lincoln was the necessary leader for that specific time in our history, almost a ‘divine intervention’ (my words, not his). It seems to me that in the events of humankind, unseen forces place certain people to be His agency in world events to forge the necessary circumstances and situations to come to pass; in that case, to resolve the “unsolvable problem of slavery, of the inhuman property-ownership laws in the South”, the unimaginably horrid treatment of fellow human beings, the beginning “breeding stock” kidnapped from their own countries. It is my own comparison, that Lincoln, like Moses, was the chosen leader, the one put in place to handle events, the one who could listen, even if faintly hearing the calling of the Divine. Lincoln, the one, who could hold the imagination of the masses to support him through extremely divisive times, influences, and the terrible losses our nation suffered. How Lincoln was that flexible, yet resolute, tenacious glue that kept our Union in the unrelenting sphere of expectation that the Union would be preserved intact and that slavery would be abolished throughout all America forever. That was the mission Lincoln held to above all else, that the states at the end of the fight would fall back into The United States of America, and that “our unity would sustain us as a world power”, which it has.
As Moses with his attributes was placed in the household of Pharaoh to someday lead the Hebrew people out of bondage, Lincoln was placed as the leader of America to end human bondage here, and to reset the balance of power. Lincoln issued ‘The Emancipation Proclamation’ as federal law before the war ended; and the ‘articles of surrender for states’ included the unbendable demands that the “Union be preserved and slavery abolished”. Lincoln’s folksy wisdom-packed parables seemed to have a comforting effect on many around him, somewhat akin to the effect the parables of Jesus had on His followers, a softened version of Truth more palatable than strong rebukes. (The religious correlations regarding Lincoln are entirely my own perceptions upon reading this book, not Sandburg’s statements.)
When General Robert E. Lee surrendered his ragged, starving 1500 soldiers to General Ulysses S. Grant, and General Joe Johnston had surrendered his ragtag remnant to General William Tecumseh Sherman, the war was over, and many in Lincoln’s cabinet and without, especially Vice President Andrew Johnson, loudly and vehemently clamored for Jefferson Davis to be publicly hanged, and for the death of all the southern traitors who had fought against the Union. However, Lincoln’s wider view and higher understanding knew those harsh actions would make it harder to bring a divided people together to heal the nation. One of the last things he wanted to do was to make a martyr of Jefferson Davis. Instead he issued a quiet edict of banishment. Davis, who was in fact, scheming to gather more remnants of the Confederate armies was told by the military leaders beneath him, “that it was over, the fighting was done!”
Lincoln had heartfelt beginnings of a solid plan for some federal reparations and to institute an era of grand Reconstruction for the rebuilding of much that had been destroyed, plans which were not brought to full fruition after Lincoln’s assassination ended his presidency.
The Civil War saga holds important lessons for us even today in our bitterly divisive stances, battered relationships, passionately held viewpoints, in our nation’s angry voices, and multitudinous hateful actions. Even the title: “Storm Over The Land” sounds like what we’re experiencing now. Some have likened our current atmosphere to a “Cold Civil War”. Sandburg wrote at the beginning of his book, “The reasons for war are deep and tangled — and a crackpot fool or lunatic can start a war if the conditions have been prepared by time and events”; and he philosophized, “Was a great human storm now to be let loose on the land?” I pray we have learned the crucial lessons from our history; that our nation of immigrants, through great sacrifices of generations, have forged “a government of the people, by the people, for the people, that shall not perish from the earth”, as Lincoln famously stated in his 1863 Gettysburg Address. Carl Sandburg, born in Galesburg, Illinois, from immigrant parents, was a man for “The People, Yes”, but that’s another book.
This piece written by Trish Forsyth Voss, was my small synopsis & commentary on Sandburg’s book, “Storm Over The Land”, with a few quotes or paraphrased statements found therein; I edited, improving a few sentences of, my previous version that was published in the Winter 2022-2023 quarterly of Inklings & Idlings, The Newsletter of the Carl Sandburg Historic Site Association. (www.sandburg.org)
Apr 7 2023
Storm Over The Land: A Profile of the Civil War
“Storm Over The Land: A Profile of the Civil War”, by Carl Sandburg is a story carved mainly from Sandburg’s four-volumes of “Abraham Lincoln: The War Years”, wherein Sandburg tells the dramatic tales of the mega-clash between the North and the South, the military leaders, the battles, the soldiers on both sides fighting for their views, their state, their property. Many Southerners wanted slavery extended into the expanding territories; the cries and actions for abolition growing ever stronger in the North. Sandburg did prodigious research for his works; this 420-page book has an eleven-page index in small print at its conclusion (copyright 1939). The story tells how the “American Union of States was nearly torn asunder through all the storms of passionate divisions of economic, racial, moral, and cultural factors underlying the political climate that came to a head early in 1861 just as Abraham Lincoln assumed the U.S. Presidency”. The war lasted four long years, ending shortly after Lincoln’s reelection, a few months into his second term.
Sandburg gives such an interesting portrait of Lincoln throughout the several years of heart-wrenching events, and quoted many of his folksy anecdotes or parables given in response to queries put to him on diverse issues. Sandburg deftly shows how Lincoln was the necessary leader for that specific time in our history, almost a ‘divine intervention’ (my words, not his). It seems to me that in the events of humankind, unseen forces place certain people to be His agency in world events to forge the necessary circumstances and situations to come to pass; in that case, to resolve the “unsolvable problem of slavery, of the inhuman property-ownership laws in the South”, the unimaginably horrid treatment of fellow human beings, the beginning “breeding stock” kidnapped from their own countries. It is my own comparison, that Lincoln, like Moses, was the chosen leader, the one put in place to handle events, the one who could listen, even if faintly hearing the calling of the Divine. Lincoln, the one, who could hold the imagination of the masses to support him through extremely divisive times, influences, and the terrible losses our nation suffered. How Lincoln was that flexible, yet resolute, tenacious glue that kept our Union in the unrelenting sphere of expectation that the Union would be preserved intact and that slavery would be abolished throughout all America forever. That was the mission Lincoln held to above all else, that the states at the end of the fight would fall back into The United States of America, and that “our unity would sustain us as a world power”, which it has.
As Moses with his attributes was placed in the household of Pharaoh to someday lead the Hebrew people out of bondage, Lincoln was placed as the leader of America to end human bondage here, and to reset the balance of power. Lincoln issued ‘The Emancipation Proclamation’ as federal law before the war ended; and the ‘articles of surrender for states’ included the unbendable demands that the “Union be preserved and slavery abolished”. Lincoln’s folksy wisdom-packed parables seemed to have a comforting effect on many around him, somewhat akin to the effect the parables of Jesus had on His followers, a softened version of Truth more palatable than strong rebukes. (The religious correlations regarding Lincoln are entirely my own perceptions upon reading this book, not Sandburg’s statements.)
When General Robert E. Lee surrendered his ragged, starving 1500 soldiers to General Ulysses S. Grant, and General Joe Johnston had surrendered his ragtag remnant to General William Tecumseh Sherman, the war was over, and many in Lincoln’s cabinet and without, especially Vice President Andrew Johnson, loudly and vehemently clamored for Jefferson Davis to be publicly hanged, and for the death of all the southern traitors who had fought against the Union. However, Lincoln’s wider view and higher understanding knew those harsh actions would make it harder to bring a divided people together to heal the nation. One of the last things he wanted to do was to make a martyr of Jefferson Davis. Instead he issued a quiet edict of banishment. Davis, who was in fact, scheming to gather more remnants of the Confederate armies was told by the military leaders beneath him, “that it was over, the fighting was done!”
Lincoln had heartfelt beginnings of a solid plan for some federal reparations and to institute an era of grand Reconstruction for the rebuilding of much that had been destroyed, plans which were not brought to full fruition after Lincoln’s assassination ended his presidency.
The Civil War saga holds important lessons for us even today in our bitterly divisive stances, battered relationships, passionately held viewpoints, in our nation’s angry voices, and multitudinous hateful actions. Even the title: “Storm Over The Land” sounds like what we’re experiencing now. Some have likened our current atmosphere to a “Cold Civil War”. Sandburg wrote at the beginning of his book, “The reasons for war are deep and tangled — and a crackpot fool or lunatic can start a war if the conditions have been prepared by time and events”; and he philosophized, “Was a great human storm now to be let loose on the land?” I pray we have learned the crucial lessons from our history; that our nation of immigrants, through great sacrifices of generations, have forged “a government of the people, by the people, for the people, that shall not perish from the earth”, as Lincoln famously stated in his 1863 Gettysburg Address. Carl Sandburg, born in Galesburg, Illinois, from immigrant parents, was a man for “The People, Yes”, but that’s another book.
This piece written by Trish Forsyth Voss, was my small synopsis & commentary on Sandburg’s book, “Storm Over The Land”, with a few quotes or paraphrased statements found therein; I edited, improving a few sentences of, my previous version that was published in the Winter 2022-2023 quarterly of Inklings & Idlings, The Newsletter of the Carl Sandburg Historic Site Association. (www.sandburg.org)
By spiritspeak • Uncategorized 0