View From a Height

Paul Tibbets, who piloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, has died at his home in Columbus, Ohio at the age of 92. By coincidence, I had just finished reading Bob Greene's book, Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War, half of which deals with Greene's friendship with Tibbets, and Tibbets's recollections of the war.

What's forgotten, and not mentioned in the AP story about Tibbets's death, is that he not only piloted the plane, he had to put together the entire team whose job it was to deliver the bomb to its target. Tibbets organized the unit near Wendover, Utah. It included not merely the flight crew of 14, but also logistical support, local and remote maintenance crews, flight planning, training, and practice.

It also included all internal and external operational security. Tibbets was the only man on the team of several thousand men who knew that they were planning on dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese. He recalled sending men home for leave before Christmas of 1944, with instructions to talk to nobody - not even their wives - about their work. On trains and busses, the men sat next to plain-clothes intelligence officers, who reported back to Tibbets about the ones who talked. When men received phone calls or telegrams about babies born during their absence, they also received congratulatory meetings with Tibbets and his staff, just to remind them that they were watching. One wonders what the Senate Democrats would make of that today.

It was a complex, difficult undertaking for one man to get off the ground. Tibbets was 30.

The AP prefers to dwell on the controversy surrounding the Bomb, devoting most of the obituary to that controversy and Tibbets's role in it over the years. For me, it's never been close. Greene's book started as a series of columns in the Chicago Tribune, and it was the number of letters and phone calls from the children of servicemen whose lives were quite probably saved by the end of the war. He also mentions in passing the vast numbers of Japanese, including women and children, whom the Japanese generals were willing to sacrifice to their death cult, and whose lives were saved by their surrender.

(Also by coincidence, I had just finished watching The King and I on On Demand the evening before it was announce that Deborah Kerr had passed away. I hope I'm not reading The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost too soon to keep Rudy from benefitting from Charles Hill's sage advice.)

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Arrived in the mail from the History Book Club:

A book of essays from the current Greatest Living Civil War Historian, having fought through a lengthy succession battle after the loss of Bruce Catton:

Not the basis of 300, nor the ancient Greek version of the classic board game:

Plus ca change:

A liberal with something good to say about a Republican:

and... Here's a hint: there's mostly good.

Now, if I can just find the time to read them...

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The pressures of trying to produce a company report have me tied down, but Amy Oliver of the Independence Institute has pointed out that today is the 148th anniversary of Lincoln's "House Divided" Speech to the Illinois Republican Convention.

Best-known is the opening:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.

However, equally important is the closing. Here, Lincoln argues that while a political movement must be willing to accept help from all responsible comers, the leadership of a great cause must be entrusted to those who actually believe in it. Otherwise, it will eventually be betrayed by those who see a way to defend their true interests and values without actually delivering a victory:

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to—day than he was yesterday—that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us—he does not pretend to be—he does not promise ever to be.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work—who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?—now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

While others of Lincoln's speeches are better-remembered, coming as they did during the crisis of the Civil War, Harry Jaffa considers this to be the most consequential of Lincoln's speeches.

As Don Fehrenbacher has written, everyone knew that a South that would not accept Stephen A. Douglas as leader of the Democratic Party, would never accept Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. Yet the South was foolish in what it did. It actually looked at Douglas through the lenses Lincoln had kindly provided them in the debates, in the follow-up of the House Divided speech. Had they abated their demand for a slave code for Territories, they might have elected a President who might have found more certain means of guaranteeing the survival and success of slavery. Indeed, for all we know, slavery might be flourishing amongst us even now. That it does not, we have the House Divided speech to thank.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the best descriptions that I've found of the politics of 1860 comes from Bruce Catton's The Coming Fury, the first in his trilogy of the Centennial History of the Civil War. Now, Catton was a northerner, and had the North's views of the causes of the war, which differ considerably from the South's. They do, however, have the added advantage of being right. (For instance, if states' rights divorced from slavery really were the issue, why was the CSA Constitution mute on that point?)

The key thing to remember is that at each point in the crisis, the two sides failed utterly to understand each other. The North, in particular the Republicans, had no idea of the threat they represented in the minds of the South, in particular the newspapermen. Lincoln justified his refusal to elaborate on his views on the legal status of slavery on the grounds that anything he said can and would be used against him in the court of public opinion. What he didn't see was that while it couldn't affect the election (he wasn't on any Southern ballots, anyway), his silence could be twisted just as effectively as any words he might have used.

In fact, throughout 1860, the North continued to view secession as a threat, and then as a political maneuver, long after the fire-eaters had hijacked the process and driven Union sympathy to the fringe. There was considerable Union sentiment, but it was a mile wide and an inch deep, and once the step was taken, loyalty was going to be sectional rather than national. In fact, the border states - including Virginia - didn't secede until it was evident that force would be used to protect Federal property and keep the south in the Union.

For the South's part, they didn't understand the North's commitment to the Union, and its unwillingness to be coerced into committing large portions of its GDP and legal system to the support of a crumbling institution. It also probably overestimated Southern sympathy in the border slave states, which is odd, considering that that's where the Constitution Party, whos platform essentially consisted of wishful thinking about reaching another compromise, got most of its votes.

In fact, the one character who comes out looking the most sane, the most rational, and the most insightful, is Stephen Douglas. Douglas was the only candidate who was willing to conduct a campaign on the actual issues of slavery and potential secession, while all other parties talked around the first and ignored the second. By doing so, Catton points out, they left an electino process designed for national decision-making not having resolved anything.

One last point is also worth considering. Secession was brought about by a confluence of southern temperment, and a skillful manipulation of the political process. The fire-eaters, William Yancey chief among them, maneuvered to get a crisis, promoting a schism in the Democratic Party and willing the election of Lincoln. They did this because they rightly calculated that much of the South was tired of compromise and talk and wanted action and a resolution. Douglas's sin was, in Catton's words, that he was proposing a politician's solution at a time when the political institutions had ceased to function. The fire-eaters denied him the nomination precisely because they feared he might be able to bring such an agreement about. From their point of view, it was better to split the party in order to lose the election, and then let the fear of Lincoln do its work.

For that reason, elections need to be about what they're about. It's one reason "trangulation" and "the permanent campaign" are so damaging to the body politic, and it they probably have soemthing to do with why we're now 48-48 rather than 40-40.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've finally posted my review of Tom Holland's Rubicon. It's a good book, but more importantly, there's a reason the Founders studied this period. Not for nothing was Cato one of the most popular plays of the day. I know people are tired of hearing this, but just because we don't need to read this stuff in Latin doesn't mean we don't need to read it at all.

What does this have to do with us? Well, no, it doesn't mean that money is the equivalent of Legions, and that therefore, McCain-Feingold is saving us from Octavian Redux. It does mean that federalism and separation of powers are a good thing. Not because of concentration of power per se, but because smaller offices are less tempting to ambitious men. And if you've got a lot of small offices scattered all over the country, it's almost impossible to dominate them all.

Secondly, there's the importance of citizenship and engagement. Before baseball, politics was the great participatory sport. We find it hard to believe, but read just about any contemporaneous account. Read Washington Irving, or Tocqueville, or Dickens, and they all say the same thing. And not just blowing smoke, but informed debate.

The danger of uninformed, selfish engagement without virtue is that you end up with a mob that's easily led or bought off. And the more the point of political engagement becomes to secure favors and money, the less it becomes about building a community. Which means it becomes passive, and then disappears altogether.

So how do these threats manifest themselves to us? Ah, that's for another post.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been reading John Steele Gordon's An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power, over the last few days, and it contains a number of interesting nuggets.

The one that stands out, given the questions about Chief Justice Roberts and prospective Justice Miers, concerns the difference between political and judicial philosophy. Salmon Chase, as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, helped push through the first income tax to help finance the War of Northern Aggression. Later, as Chief Justice, he ruled it unconstitutional, although by then the war was over.

There is a difference between political and legal opinion.

Oh, yes. The book is very interesting, and hopefully I'll be posting a review shortly.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)