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Eight Generations Later, America remains at war with itself

As a speechwriter, author, and someone who has traded in words and ideas for most of his life, I am still in awe of Abraham Lincoln.

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Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln

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In the autumn of 1864, during the bloodiest days of the Civil War, a grieving mother in Massachusetts named Lydia Bixby was believed to have lost five sons fighting for the Union. The story reached the White House, and President Abraham Lincoln—known for his eloquence and deep sense of duty—responded with a condolence letter.

It was short.

Just a few paragraphs.

But it crystallized for Americans what the war was about: not just victory, but sacrifice. And grief. And meaning.

But the full story is more complicated.

Lydia Bixby was presented to Lincoln as the archetype of loss: a widowed mother who had given everything. But in reality, only two of her sons had died in battle. One came home. Two likely deserted. And Lydia herself, by most accounts, was a Confederate sympathizer who destroyed the original letter.

None of that stopped the myth from taking hold.

The nation needed a symbol of ultimate sacrifice. Bixby became it. And Lincoln’s words—detached from the facts—still resonate, not because they were true, but because they said what the country needed to believe: that grief could be honored, that loss had meaning, and that someone, somewhere, was paying attention.

While many see the Gettysburg Address as Lincoln’s greatest speech, this is—at least to me—his finest writing.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement...

It’s what I thought about during the two military funerals I attended—for colleagues who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve been to Arlington Cemetary only three times, two of them for funerals.

And it’s why I feel so angry and despondent about where this country stands now—and where it is clearly headed.

Our history has been paid for in blood. And still, the debt seems unpaid.

We cannot reconcile our professed ideals with our actual behavior, even now. We appear to be no more than one election away from implosion. And more than half the people in this nation have chosen to elect—a second time—a racist, fascist, and convicted felon as their president.

That’s something I once believed was impossible, given the cost of getting from 1865 to now.

I guess I was wrong.

Eight generations of Americans, and we still can’t seem to stop fighting each other.

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A final thought.

For those who have never been to Arlington National Cemetery, Confederate officers and soldiers are buried there in a plot known as Section 16. It’s a long story how that came to be—but if you’re looking to assign blame, President McKinley is a good place to start (I’m sure Wikipedia has the details).

Section 16 is different from every other part of the cemetery. All the other headstones face east, toward Washington—toward the capital they fought to preserve.

But not Section 16.

The gravestones are arranged in a circle, facing inward, toward a statue: the Confederate Memorial.

The statue, erected in 1914, was funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and long criticized for its whitewashed depiction of slavery and its promotion of a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy.”

Why do the headstones face inward?

Because their backs are turned to the Capitol—just as they turned their backs on the Union.

The statue no longer stands.

In 2021, Congress passed legislation mandating the removal of Confederate commemorations on military property. That included the Arlington monument.

After a lengthy review, the Pentagon ordered it removed in December 2023. It was dismantled quietly, without ceremony. The graves remain. But the monument that once towered above them is gone.

Section 16 symbolizes how America chose reconciliation over justice—and how that choice shaped our national memory.
Instead of confronting the truth of the Confederacy, we romanticized it.
We built monuments not just to the dead, but to a lie.

That it stood at Arlington—on land seized from Robert E. Lee himself as a rebuke of his rebellion—only deepens the irony.

And the fact that it stood for more than a century?

That tells you how long myths can outlive the facts.

I’ve concluded, sadly, one thing:

Lincoln gave Grant the wrong orders.

He should have ordered Grant to seize Lee and shoot him in the head. The Union should have seized and executed the officers of the CSA. Jefferson Davis should have been hunted down and hanged.

Every attempt should have been made to obliterate any idea that the Confederacy did anything but lose the war. The defeat should have been total and merciless.

The occupation of the South shouldn’t have ended in 1877. It shouldn’t have ended in 1900. It shouldn’t have ended in 1960.

I’m not kidding about that.

It should only have ended when the Southern states finally accepted that the war had been lost. They do not get a say on equality or cultural identity. They played their gambit, turned their backs on the Union—and lost.

That is a shame they must bear forever.

Had we done all of those things—had we made treason fatal and slavery unforgivable—this idea of entitlement, the myth of noble rebellion, the false reconciliation that paved the way for Trump, might never have survived.

Lincoln gave the wrong order. Grant should have executed Lee. Grant should have executed Davis. The CSA officers should have been stripped of rank, pensions, and allowed to roam free, writing their memoirs and building the case of “southern grievance” against the Union.

Because reconciliation without justice isn’t peace. It’s delay.

And our modern times prove that fact beyond any reasonable doubt.

Lincoln paid for his mercy with his life. The traitors lived to write the myth. And the butcher’s bill is now ours to pay.