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Commemorations of past events sometimes tell one more about the present than the past. That is certainly evident in recent messages from President Trump. One of the President's key policy and discursive focus is on peace: peace through strength, negotiated peace, peace as a cessation of hostilities, and peace as a transactional device necessary to build ether relationships or solidarity r just a platform for engagement (economic, social, cultural or political). On 9 April, and as part of the America at 250 campaign, the President circulated America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of the Surrender at Appomattox.
Key themes are well worn--the preservation of the Union, even at the price of war; and the possibility of solidarity in the aftermath of conflict. Perhaps its key text was this:
General Grant understood that rebuilding a united America depended on the terms of surrender. Rather than demanding harsh punishment for General Lee’s men, he offered a unifying message: “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” At last, the war-torn Union began the course for reconstruction and the path to fulfilling the founding principles that first breathed life into our Republic 250 years ago. To this day, the surrender at Appomattox stands as an enduring testament to the resilience of a divided Nation, the strength and resolve of the American people, and the sacred ideals at the heart of our national identity. Today, we recommit to the eternal truth that the United States of America is blessed from on high; bound together by justice; and was, is, and will forever be one Nation under God. (Ibid.)
Its key elements are meant to be (1) "strength and resolve" (of the people, their national identity as a paramount force, (2) as its expression as justice, and (3) exogenously tied to religious principle frame the core of the Trump Administration's discursive (re)construction of the Republic. It is a reconstruction aligned with the core element of the present fundamental political line the return to the American golden age (the US version of the Chinese great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" (实现中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦)) in the current era of historical development. It is one that can be achieved from out the the most violent fracture and assumes that what was ripped apart can be put together where solidarity is privileged over retribution.
But it has another element, one that the President brought out about a year earlier in another Memorandum: Presidential Message on the 162nd Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. There the message was also clear--it is necessary to assert strength to bring the opponent to the negotiating table--not to obliterate them, but to draw them to a realistic negotiation of peace in the then current circumstances of the parties. "Emboldened by a string of recent Confederate victories, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia launched an invasion of the North with a set of clear goals: push the fighting from war-torn Virginia past the Mason-Dixon line, defeat the Union troops on their own soil, and force President Abraham Lincoln into peace negotiations." Indeed, that was what both sides sought through strength and resolve. It was not that the strategy was bad; indeed the opposite was true. It was an excellent strategy--unless you lose. In that case one will come to the negotiating table, but with little to negotiate but surrender. Thus both the strategy and its caution--something that ought to be kept in mind in the context of the current conflict between US/Israel and Iran/allies/proxies. Having committed to peace through strength and resolve, it is something of a disaster to lose either one's resolve or to fail to assert strength fully--where the4 object is the negotiating table and peace. That will determine the role of the parties in the "Appomattox" turn at the end of the US-Iranian conflict.
The full text of the Message follows.
Following four brutal years of suffering, sacrifice, and unthinkable tragedy during the Civil War, the fate of the Union was secured in triumph when General Robert E. Lee formally issued his surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House—ending the war, healing the wounds of division, and restoring the full glory of the American promise.
In the final days leading to that epic moment, the Army of Northern Virginia, led by General Lee, was worn down by hunger, exhaustion, and the relentless advance of General Grant’s Army of the Potomac. The excruciating toll of the Civil War weighed heavily all across the country: Hundreds of thousands of American lives were lost, families were torn apart, brother met brother on the field of battle, and our Nation’s most sacred values and commitments stood in grave peril. By the spring of 1865, Confederate forces were cut off from reserves and surrounded on all fronts—and the culmination of our Nation’s most horrific war fell at the hands of these two great men of history in a humble home in the Virginia countryside.
While the shadow of the war loomed across the small parlor, on April 9, 1865, violence and bloodshed gave way to a burgeoning peace. General Grant understood that rebuilding a united America depended on the terms of surrender. Rather than demanding harsh punishment for General Lee’s men, he offered a unifying message: “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” At last, the war-torn Union began the course for reconstruction and the path to fulfilling the founding principles that first breathed life into our Republic 250 years ago.
To this day, the surrender at Appomattox stands as an enduring testament to the resilience of a divided Nation, the strength and resolve of the American people, and the sacred ideals at the heart of our national identity. Today, we recommit to the eternal truth that the United States of America is blessed from on high; bound together by justice; and was, is, and will forever be one Nation under God.
Today, our Nation solemnly commemorates the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg—the single deadliest battle of the Civil War and a defining milestone in America’s epic struggle to preserve our Union and secure the sacred blessings of freedom and democracy.
In the spring of 1863, the Civil War had been raging for over 2 years, and the future of the United States hung in the balance. Emboldened by a string of recent Confederate victories, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia launched an invasion of the North with a set of clear goals: push the fighting from war-torn Virginia past the Mason-Dixon line, defeat the Union troops on their own soil, and force President Abraham Lincoln into peace negotiations.
With the very fate of the Republic at stake, the Union forces remained steadfast in their resolve to defend the freedom of their fellow countrymen as their last full measure of devotion. The Union Army of the Potomac—led first by General Joseph Hooker and then by General George Meade—marched north to pursue the Confederate forces. Divisions of the two forces met near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1863.
What began as an unplanned encounter quickly erupted into an epochal struggle with the entire war and the very fate of our Nation at stake. As Union defensive lines, known as the famed “fishhook,” came under attack by Confederate forces from three directions, brother met brother amid fierce clashes in places whose names have been indelibly marked in the chapters of American history: Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, and the Peach Orchard, to name but a few. With the failure of Pickett’s Charge on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, the battle was won, the high-water mark of the Confederacy had been reached, and the course of the remaining years of the Civil War was set. The Confederacy would never recover from their loss at Gettysburg—paving the way to the ultimate surrender of Lee’s Army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, and the end of the Confederacy itself.
From July 1-3, 1863, of the estimated 51,000 casualties on both side, 7,058 souls were lost—3,155 Union and 3,903 Confederate were, making the Battle of Gettysburg the bloodiest battle to ever take place on American soil. Just months later, in November of 1863, President Lincoln would stand on these hallowed grounds and immortalize these heroic sacrifices in his historic Gettysburg Address, proclaiming that “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
These words continue to inspire citizens all across our land. In the darkest days of our Nation’s history, thousands of courageous men left behind their homes and families for the noble causes of duty, honor, and country. On the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, we pay tribute to the patriots who valiantly shed their blood to cast out slavery and preserve our glorious Union. Their unwavering courage, selfless sacrifice, and unfailing devotion to our founding principles define the eternal triumph of the American spirit.
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