“Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wiley agitator who induces him to desert?” — President Abraham Lincoln, June 1863.
When asking this question, Lincoln was referencing the concerted effort of a political faction within the Democratic Party to incite rebellion among Union soldiers. That faction was known as the “Copperheads.”
Currently, a group of modern-day Copperheads is encouraging members of the American military to disobey orders they believe to be unlawful, proclaiming, “We have your back.”
Isn’t that nice.
If there’s one thing this country needs at the moment, it’s a politicized military with each soldier deciding for himself which orders he will obey and which he will not.
I’m no expert on the armed forces, but that strikes me as being a less-than-ideal way to run a military.
Can politicians get any lower? To suggest soldiers should rebel against their leadership is not only unbelievably dangerous, it’s despicable.
But there they were, two Democratic senators and four Democratic members of the House of Representatives — Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and Jason Crow (D-Col.) publicly calling on service members to ignore orders they determine for themselves to be “illegal.”
Unfortunately, these lawmakers refused to specify which particular orders they had in mind.
Today’s Copperheads are as reprehensible as those Lincoln had to contend with. Lincoln referred to them as the “fire in the rear.”
In 2007, Mackubin T. Owens reviewed a book written by journalist-turned-academic-historian Jennifer Weber entitled “Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North.” I found Owens’ review on The Ashland Center website.
Written in 2007, Weber’s book draws parallels between the attempt of Democrats to undermine President Lincoln’s efforts to save the Union with the attempt of Democrats in this century to undermine President George W. Bush’s efforts to defeat Islamic radicalism in Iraq.
Now, we have a new generation of Copperhead politicians who have suddenly emerged seeking again to stir rebellion in the military.
In his review, Owens writes, “Weber demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the actions of the Copperheads materially damaged the ability of the Lincoln administration to prosecute the war,” by actively interfering with recruiting and encouraging desertion. “Indeed,” Owens continues, “they generated so much opposition to conscription that the Army was forced to divert resources from the battlefield to the hotbeds of Copperhead activity in order to maintain order.”
The inflammatory language used by Copperhead politicians and journalists of all generations is strikingly similar.
Marcus M. “Brick” Pomeroy was a prominent Copperhead newspaper editor for the La Crosse Democrat, which published many scathing articles about President Lincoln.
In one such article, Pomeroy referred to Lincoln as being a “worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero.”
Another Democratic editorial published after Lincoln’s renomination said, “May God Almighty forbid that we are to have two terms of the rottenest, most stinking, ruin working smallpox ever conceived by fiends or mortals.”
One might say the Copperheads of Lincoln’s day suffered from LDS — “Lincoln Derangement Syndrome.”
It all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?
Pomeroy would fit right in at many of today’s newsrooms. If someone can despise Abraham Lincoln so thoroughly, hating Donald Trump would be no problem at all for him.
Senators Slotkin and Kelly and their fellow agitators in the House are attempting to stir up trouble for President Trump in the military, a prospect that I’m sure appeals to the radical left of their party, which seeks confrontation with Trump at all costs, the country be damned.
But even from a purely political perspective, Democrats are playing with fire. As Weber points out, “many Union soldiers came to despise the Copperheads more than they disdained the [Confederate] Rebels.”
An assistant surgeon of an Iowa regiment put it this way: “It is a common saying here that if we are whipped, it will be by Northern votes, not by Southern bullets.”
Weber also shared the contents of a letter a group of Indiana soldiers wrote in response to correspondence they had received from Copperhead friends back home:
“Your letter shows you to be a cowardly traitor. No traitor can be my friend; if you cannot renounce your allegiance to the Copperhead scoundrels and own your allegiance to the Government which has always protected you, you are my enemy.”
Weber goes on to note Union soldiers became “tired of being described by the Copperheads as instruments of a tyrannical administration.” She said, “The soldiers seemed to understand fairly quickly that the Copperheads preferred Lincoln’s failure to the country’s success.”
Democrats would do well to think beyond the end of their noses when it comes to their efforts to undermine the U.S. military, both in terms of what doing so means for the country, as well as for their own political future.
I find it hard to believe that any elected official’s lust for power or hatred for Trump is so overpowering that they are willing to undermine the American military to achieve it.
Now, as long as we’re talking about Abraham Lincoln, allow me to shift gears to remind readers that it was Lincoln himself who made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.
Lincoln actually issued nine calls for prayer and thanksgiving while he was in office.
On March 30, 1863, as the Civil War raged, Lincoln issued a “Proclamation calling for a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.”
“We have been the recipients,” he wrote, “of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power … But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”
There will always be politicians who seek to use the great blessings God has bestowed on the American people for their own selfish interests.
This Thanksgiving, I pray God grants all Americans the wisdom to discern between elected officials who are genuine in their desire to serve the interests of the country and those who use their office for partisan advantage or personal gain.
May God make us truly grateful for the former, while protecting us from the latter.
A blessed Thanksgiving to all.
Chris Roemer resides in Finksburg. He can be contacted at chrisroemer1960@gmail.com.