No Left Turns alerts us to the series of essays that Mac Owens is writing about the battles and campaigns of the Civil War for the Ashbrook Centersite. As Peter Schramm explains, the first of these essays -- "Two Mays in wartime" -- looks at two battles that occurred in almost the same place exactly one year apart during the month of May: Chancellorsville in 1863 and The Wilderness in 1864.

To the two Mays that Mac Owens recounts, today's New York Sun editorial adds reflections on the May 2007 meeting of President Bush and congressional Republicans on the Iraq war yesterday. The Sun editorial recalls Lincoln's 1865 meeting with Chicago Tribune editor Lloyd Medill. Medill appealed to Lincoln and Stanton for Chicago to be relieved from the most recent draft call:

[I]n Medill's own account, Lincoln turned on the great editor. "‘And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward. You and your Tribune have had more influence than any [other] paper in the Northwest in making this war. You can influence great masses, and yet you cry to be spared at a moment when your cause is suffering. Go home and send us those men.'" Wrote Medill: "I couldn't say anything. It was the first time I ever was whipped, and I didn't have an answer...."

***

That was how The Great Emancipator turned the tables on the Republicans who had gone weak-kneed in the middle of a war. Chicago did meet its draft call, sending, by Mr. Wendt's count, nearly a fifth of its population into the struggle for the Union. For nearly three decades, we have carried in our wallet a dog-eared passage of Medill's confession to share with aspiring young editors. There are those who will say that the circumstances are different today. But by our lights, it doesn't matter whether the pleaders are newspaper editors or congressmen. It is Bush who is in Lincoln's boots. The rest of the country knows in its heart the honorable course, which history will remember for generations after the encounters now taking place.

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Posted by Scott at 06:17 AM  |    |