Jay Winik: Obama Will Find the White House Is a Lonely Place
[Mr. Winik, a historian, is the author of "April 1865" (HarperCollins, 2001) and "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800" (Harper, 2007).]
The day after Abraham Lincoln's election, he assembled a gaggle of reporters and boisterously declared, "Well boys, your troubles are now over; mine have only just begun."
Little did he know just how prophetic his words would be. Between Election Day and his inauguration, seven Southern states seceded from the Union and the Fort Sumter crisis reached a dangerous flashpoint.
His own general-in-chief, Winfield Scott, strongly advised him to surrender the fort. William Seward, his secretary of state, ardently counseled negotiations with the South, and even privately assured the Confederates that Sumter would be evacuated. Most of his cabinet sided with Seward and voted to evacuate as well.
That was when Lincoln decided that he alone would have to decide. To the flicker of oil lamps, he stayed up all night on March 28. Shortly after dawn the next morning, he informed the cabinet that he would re-provision the besieged Fort Sumter -- a fateful move that all but ensured civil war.
The war would grind on for four long years and as late as 1864, an exhausted Lincoln would aimlessly roam the White House corridors, moaning, "I must have relief from this terrible anxiety or it will kill me." If it didn't kill him the ongoing avalanche of public and private criticism almost did, not to mention his string of distressingly ineffective generals. Little wonder that, instead of glory in the presidency, Lincoln once confessed, he found "only ashes and blood."
Lincoln was one of our two greatest presidents, saving the Union and freeing the slaves. But never was the going easy, not in the beginning of the great crisis, not in the middle, not at the end. When he took office, Lincoln never dreamed of a civil war that would last for four years and consume 620,000 lives.
For our president-elect, who is looking to history for guidance, herein lies a cautionary tale. Barack Obama will soon learn two lessons that all of our presidents, the great ones as well as the failed ones, discover -- often the hard way. The challenges he will face will almost certainly be different from what he thought. And however talented his team, he will never be able to escape the often overwhelming isolation of presidential decision making....
Read entire article at WSJ
The day after Abraham Lincoln's election, he assembled a gaggle of reporters and boisterously declared, "Well boys, your troubles are now over; mine have only just begun."
Little did he know just how prophetic his words would be. Between Election Day and his inauguration, seven Southern states seceded from the Union and the Fort Sumter crisis reached a dangerous flashpoint.
His own general-in-chief, Winfield Scott, strongly advised him to surrender the fort. William Seward, his secretary of state, ardently counseled negotiations with the South, and even privately assured the Confederates that Sumter would be evacuated. Most of his cabinet sided with Seward and voted to evacuate as well.
That was when Lincoln decided that he alone would have to decide. To the flicker of oil lamps, he stayed up all night on March 28. Shortly after dawn the next morning, he informed the cabinet that he would re-provision the besieged Fort Sumter -- a fateful move that all but ensured civil war.
The war would grind on for four long years and as late as 1864, an exhausted Lincoln would aimlessly roam the White House corridors, moaning, "I must have relief from this terrible anxiety or it will kill me." If it didn't kill him the ongoing avalanche of public and private criticism almost did, not to mention his string of distressingly ineffective generals. Little wonder that, instead of glory in the presidency, Lincoln once confessed, he found "only ashes and blood."
Lincoln was one of our two greatest presidents, saving the Union and freeing the slaves. But never was the going easy, not in the beginning of the great crisis, not in the middle, not at the end. When he took office, Lincoln never dreamed of a civil war that would last for four years and consume 620,000 lives.
For our president-elect, who is looking to history for guidance, herein lies a cautionary tale. Barack Obama will soon learn two lessons that all of our presidents, the great ones as well as the failed ones, discover -- often the hard way. The challenges he will face will almost certainly be different from what he thought. And however talented his team, he will never be able to escape the often overwhelming isolation of presidential decision making....