Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Important insight already from "After Lincoln"


     I should finish this gift in a few more days. For those seeking a detailed, step-by-step process of Reconstruction, keep looking! Langguth gives biographical sketches of major participants from this time. Even if you think you know all about U.S. Grant, you can learn something. But Ben Wade, U.S Senator from Ohio, is not well known, and he came within one vote of being president.

    Andrew Johnson took office when Lincoln was assassinated. The Tennessean had a difficult task ahead of him, and did not make it any easier. The insight I had while reading about his impeachment and Senate trial was that while not perfect by any means, had he been removed from office, a precedent would have been set for Congress to remove or obstruct a president for general dislike. Of course, that has never happened, or even come close to happening, since 1868. (I will pause now for the reader to laugh, groan, chortle, or sigh).

    Maybe after I read this I can go back to editing a poem or two, and maybe even writing about our trip to Savannah. That lovely city, incidentally, was the "Christmas present" in 1864 General William Tecumseh Sherman made to President Lincoln.





      

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