"Constitutional" Quotations from "And There Was Light" by John Meacham

[David Lockmiller]

INSIDE THE BEST-SELLER LIST
New York Times
By Elisabeth Egan
Jan. 12, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

Lincoln’s shadow hovered over Meacham’s childhood, long before he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer. He grew up in Chattanooga, Tenn., about 1,000 yards from the Confederate headquarters on Missionary Ridge, site of a Union victory on Nov. 25, 1863.

A week after the battle, The Times published a report from an officer to the War Department, describing the scene: “The storming of the ridge by our troops was one of the greatest miracles in military history. No man who climbs the ascent by any of the roads that wind along its front, can believe that 18,000 men were moved upon its broken and crumbling face, unless it was his fortune to witness the deed.”

Meacham said, “I could still find, in the 1970s, old Civil War bullets in our yard.” He added, “To me, the Civil War was always tactile. It was real.”

So, why did Meacham take so long to turn his sights on Lincoln?

“Because the constitutional order has not been in as perilous a state since Lincoln himself became president,” he explained. “I actually started thinking about it after the 2016 election, wondering if the fears that many of us in the country had about threats to the constitutional order would in fact come to pass. And they did.”