by Jon Meacham.
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize winning presidential historian and appears regularly as a political commentator on TV. The book under review, “The Soul of America – The Battle for our Better Angels” was published in 2018, during the height of “the former guy’s” Administration. In the introduction, the author quoted statements of many of our past and recent Presidents, which showed their understanding and support of the notion that the president of the United States has not only administrative and legal but moral and cultural power. The result of the 2016 election, however, caused deep concerns among many Americans about the nation’s future on the battle between our better and worse angels. It was in this background that the author undertook the writing of this book, which “is a portrait of hours in which the politics of fear were prevalent – a reminder that periods of public dispiritedness are not new and a reassurance that they are survivable” and “is the story of how we have endured moments of madness and of injustice, giving the better angels of which Lincoln spoke on the eve of the Civil War a chance to prevail - and how we can again.” The author described the aftermath of the American Civil War in these words: “Within about three decades of Lee’s surrender, angry and alienated Southern whites who had lost a war had successfully used terror and political inflexibility ( a refusal to concede that the Civil War had altered the essential status of black people) to create a postbellum world of American apartheid….. Lynchings, church burnings, and the denial of access to equal education and to the ballot box were the order of the decades. A succession of largely unmemorable presidents served after Grant; none successfully marshaled the power of the office to fight the Northern acquiescence to the South’s imposition of Jim Crow.” The author described the horrible situation during the Depression, the rise of the K. K. K., the McCarthy Era, George Wallace, the inactions of several presidents which resulted, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28, 1963: “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free “. A most perilous moment occurred in 1933, when retired Marine major general Smedley Butler was approached by a group of rich Wall Streeters to raise an army, march on Washington, and take the capital to supplant FDR as president. Fortunately, they approached the wrong guy. It was not until August 1965, under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson, a white Southerner, that the Civil Rights Act was enacted. This reader, who had not taken a formal US history course in high school or college, was glad to learn a number of interesting anecdotes/quotes in reading Meacham’s book. A few are listed below: ● Dwight Eisenhower: “You do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it’s usually called ‘assault’ – not ‘leadership’……I’ll tell you what leadership is. It’s persuasion – and conciliation – and education – and patience. It is long, slow tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know – or believe in – or will practice.” ● Andrew Johnson maintained segregation in the Federal Government. ● The paper on which Theodore Roosevelt's speech was written slowed the assassin’s bullet and saved his life. He carried that bullet in his chest for the rest of his life. ● FDR was almost assassinated in February 1933. ● Eisenhower did not defend General George Marshall against the baseless accusation of McCarthy; JFK did not denounce McCarthy. ● The several most memorable “I have a dream…..” sentences in MLK Jr.’s August 28, 1963 speech were extemporaneous. As mentioned, the book was written and published before the 2020 November election. In this election, with 7 million more votes for the “new guy” and rejecting “the former guy”, America’s Better Angels appeared to have prevailed in Round 1. However, events since then (most notably January 6) had become more menacing. The question: “Whether the best of the American soul (the grace and the love, the godliness and the generosity) could finally win out over the worst (the racism and the hatred, the fear and the cruelty)”, remains to be seen.
First Inaugural of Abraham Lincoln. His speech ended with the words “……will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” (Source: Wikipedia)
Congressman John Lewis Address, Harvard Commencement, 2018 (Source: Wikipedia)
Link of review in amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1W5SCV5Y617RB/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07BYCS41G
placed 4th among 1120 reviews as of 4/4/23
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