| Harold Holzer
President Abraham Lincoln historian
Announcer: Boeing presents another in a series of essays
from contemporary opinion leaders. Today, President Abraham
Lincoln historian, Harold Holzer.
Mr. Holzer: I recently returned home from a visit to Hampton
Roads, Virginia, where the Civil War ironclads war ships Monitor
and Merrimack fought their epochal duel in 1862, revolutionizing
naval warfare forever. Here, the Monitor’s gun turret,
long buried in the deep, will soon go on display at the nearby
Mariners’ Museum.
As a Lincoln historian, seeing up close the original Dahlgren
guns, and the shell-pocked metal plate, from this Civil War
icon reminded me anew of Lincoln’s instinct for technology—rare
for his time. Had Lincoln not fast-tracked the thoroughly modern
Monitor, the Merrimack might have single-handedly won the war
for the Confederacy, scuttling not only the Union navy but
the Union itself, just four score and six years after its birth.
But I was also reminded at Hampton Roads that history is
sometimes changed not only by what great leaders do, but what
they don’t do.
In three years after the Monitor battled the Merrimac, Lincoln
himself came to Hampton Roads at the invitation of Confederate
peace emissaries with an offer they thought Lincoln couldn’t
refuse: cancel the Emancipation Proclamation, and we will lay
down our arms and re-join the Union, ending four years of division,
death, and devastation.
Lincoln may have been tempted. Peace was worth almost any
price. But not this.
In the end, Lincoln just said no. He would not revive slavery,
the cruel system that caused the war in the first place. He
would not betray the black soldiers who had fought for their
own freedom. The peace conference died, but emancipation lived
and the war continued.
Most Americans remember Hampton Roads because Lincoln said
yes to high-tech war. I remember it, too, because here he said
no to dishonorable peace.
Announcer: Boeing. Forever new frontiers.
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