Poetry and Music of War

by Yervand Kochar

Being the first modern war, the American Civil War was, in a sense, the last romantic one. In spite of having highly distinct political and economic motivations, the war was essentially about something different.
It was about a lifestyle changing, a whole Southern micro-civilization transforming. As a result, a spring of slavery which was moving the Southern mechanism popped out of the system. Emotions suppressed, expressions silenced flowed out of the plantation soil and the sound accompanying liberation was that of the first uniquely American music- the Negro spiritual.

“Spirituals were created over a 200-year period, but not until after the Civil War were most Americans aware of their existence”. Yet, the process of white acquaintance with the Negro spirituals and plantation music had begun prior to the war when “a group of Northern composers traveled throughout the South observing and notating song ideas from plantation slaves” (This quote and most of the factual data of this article is derived from Tom Faigin research). Slaves fused the songs and dances learnt from traveling Irish musicians with more rhythmic African musical techniques and played jigs and reels on homemade fiddles and banjos (a slave invention itself). This in turn was modified by the above mentioned composers into “a show that consisted of snappy songs, dances and comedy sketches, mostly imitating the plantation Negro life”. The show became known as a minstrel show and gained a sensational popularity in the North.

Among the composers was Dan Emmett who in 1859 wrote “Dixie”. Although he was Northern, “Dixie” became a hit in the South and became the Southern anthem during the war. Emmett’s group was banned from performing in the Northern cities by abolitionists. Curiously enough, at the victory celebrations in Washington, President Lincoln required to play nothing else but “Dixie” claiming that it was one of the best songs ever composed.

“Dixie”s story was not exceptional. Many songs were equally popular in the North and the South. Both sides were making parodies of each other’s patriotic songs by distorting lyrics, yet, maintaining a melody. And this, indeed, was indicative of the essence of the Civil War. The South and the North were singing the same song. They disagreed on lyrics but the melody of the war was one. It was the music of Freedom (however it was interpreted); the music of a human soul fighting for its liberation, the souls of the oppressors and oppressed, winners and losers, the soul of the nation singing.

The Civil War broke the lock to the treasury of the American musical culture. Because of the war and its outcome the process of integration of various musical traditions was fostered. Native black folk music blended with European music, African religious music blended with the white Protestant culture accompanied with the drum beat of war time ballads that protested injustice and promoted war effort. “Approximately 10,000 songs have been taken from folksong collections and regimental histories. The stage was now set for future American musical innovation”.
The prisoners’ songs, the songs of soldiers longing for their homes and their beloved along with the slave songs of toil and suffering became the cornerstones of a new, distinctively American music known as the blues.

The liberated African pentatonic (five tone) scale became the essence of jazz and carried the anger of oppression and the suffering of the war all the way to its explosion in rock.
The Civil War blended the people who inhabited this country into one coin and the tinkling of the coin had its own distinct sound. That sound was improvisational by necessity, since every group joined in with its unique instrument. It was hardly believable that the band of such diversity would be ever able to play in harmony. And many refused to believe. Yet, the band played because it was not afraid of mistakes. It found a musical expression of the American Idea- there are no mistakes in improvisation.
It took a war to understand.

The slaves were unaware of their singing most of the time. The perpetual suffering made a song their only accessible medicine. The white soldiers, (who were ridiculing that strange slave habit), faced with the horrors of war caught themselves on singing unconsciously and spontaneously.

The war made people sing. It also made them write. A tremendous amount of letters, diaries and poems, a whole universe of words carrying experiences of pain and sorrow linked soldiers to their families. Privates, officers, their wives and parents separated by the war began to communicate through the written word.

As the war prolonged beyond the worst expectations and with it prolonged the pain and misery, the words did not mean what they had meant before. The images that generation was exposed to could not be described in prose anymore.

The sufferings of the body and the elevations of the spirit were transmutable only in the poetic form. It was a sincere poetry. It was an emotional account of events, outer or inner, experienced by real people.

Walt Whitman was a quintessential poet of the time. He volunteered as a nurse for Union hospitals and would heal wounded by reciting his poetry. He was the first to break with the tradition of sentimentalism and rhyme, the influence of the European romantic poetry. His poetry vibrated realism and the rhyme didn’t matter anymore.

The classical harmony was gone from life; Whitman made it go from poetry.

The new foundation for American poetry was laid by the people who tried to understand, to evaluate the war that was changing them. The war was making poets of soldiers and was proving once again that the real poets are those who sing from their hearts not those who write from their minds.

Images of War

by Yervand Kochar

The earliest permanent photographic image was taken in 1826. The Civil War struck in 1861. The only two wars that had been photographed prior to that date were the Mexican and Crimean Wars. The total of photographic images taken during those wars combined was 400. The total of the photographic images taken during the American civil War exceeded one million.

The Civil War was the first most photographed war. “It was the first conflict in which photographers consciously sought to capture war in all its horrors… By the spring of 1862, Mathew Brady’s talented crew of photographic operatives – Alexander Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan, George N. Barnard, and James F. Gibson, among others – were actively following the armies, hauling their chemicals, fragile glass plates, and bulky wooden cameras in portable darkrooms. They recorded the gruesome aftermath of battle, and displayed in the picture galleries of Manhattan and Washington a shocking vision of crowded hospitals and the corpse-strewn fields of Antietam, Gettysburg, and Petersburg” ( ‘My Brother’s Face’ by C. Phillips & A. Axelrod).

The daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes could not be reproduced. “These one-of -a-kind images of loved ones were treated as revered icons”.
The photographic techniques were perfected during the war and mostly because of the war. To fulfill the increasing demand, the photographic process had to become more efficient and rapid in execution.
The collodion process allowed the photographers to make albumen prints which enhanced marketability and popularity of photographic images throughout the nations.

When the war began the majority on both sides was strongly convinced that it would finish in a matter of months. As it evolved into an enduring bloodshed, the quick victory euphoria dissolved rapidly. After devastating battles, gathered at the campfires, soldiers realized that some of their friends remained forever on a battlefield. The longer the war lasted the less vivid the faces of their dead friends became, ultimately to be forgotten. It seemed that a whole generation was vanishing without a trace in mass graves and battlefields where men and horses laid together. Entire families were disappearing caught in a process which by 1862 went entirely out of anybody’s control. Privates were as uncertain about the future as the Presidents. History took a hold of the war and seemed to be indifferent to its executioners.

Soldiers would spend their last money to be photographed. Taking a picture during the war was more than capturing an image. It was an attempt to capture a life vanishing, people and cities disappearing as if they’d not existed. It was an attempt to stop the insanity and horror, to steal faces from the grasp of death. As the men were dying in thousands from bullets, wounds and diseases their relatives carried their images in lockets, pocket watches and gutta-percha cases. For many families in the North and the South the original images of their sons, fathers and husbands were lost forever.

On Dangers of Historic Manipulations

by Yervand Kochar

We should preserve the whole image and the whole history regardless of our current views. The revisionist histories are like bad translations; the words are there but the meaning is lost.
The preservation of history is not a partisan issue. It is a moral issue and if thoroughly examined a legal issue. The historic lie is the worst form of lying and carries the most devastating impact on generations to come. Parties and politicians make mistakes. People and nations make mistakes. Facing historic reality and the sins of the past is a great step to redemption and liberation. The denial of history, moreover, its manipulation, disintegrates the psychological sanity of an entire nation. It is a more dangerous process than even those who consciously convey it from the blind spot of their limited political existence can perceive.

History is not a discipline one learns in books. As every human being has his or her biography so does every nation. History is a vibrant memory of the nation. History is a Memory of Our Spirit. Those who rewrite history rewrite memory. Memory is a cornerstone of the psychological balance, whether individual or national. The temple of life is founded on memory. Disintegrating memory is a way to destruction of the temple. The loss of memory is the first step to insanity.

The Civil War was a direct result of this process. The national hysteria erupted because the memory of our nation was confused and finally lapsed. People began to interpret history, to bend it, to manipulate it to their political goals. Lincoln's speech at the Copper Union that gained him the Republican nomination was dedicated to this very issue. In his detailed investigation of the Founding Fathers, Lincoln proved that, although owning slaves themselves, most of the Founding Fathers were in core opposed to the expansion and existence of slavery. This speech had an enormous healing impact because it clarified history for a big segment of a confused nation. It gave the Union men moral clarity and confidence in the cause and tradition of freedom. It proved that they were continuing their fathers' job and that their fathers were not bad as many stated consistently.

The Cooper Union speech came too late to extinguish the fire of National Psychosis. The nation fell into a very dark place and the only way out was the terrible therapy of war. A war that still continues today in different shapes.

Every generation experiences psychosis to some degree. What is important to remember is that a possibility of a complete nervous breakdown known as Civil War is not as remote as it appears. Up to the first shot of the Civil War people rejected it's probability. The war of one hemisphere of the American psyche against the other was unbelievable and was rejected vehemently. It took almost two years for the people in the Union to accept the fact that they were in war against their fellow Americans. The danger of the fierce conflict must not be neglected. The physical confrontation is just a tip of an iceberg. The eruption of the physical Civil War had been brewing since the beginning of the American Republic. Whether it is a physical confrontation or a civil war of thoughts, the impact is devastating. It is a national schizophrenia in which two sides of psyche designed to work in balance work against each other. The frequency and intensity of the National Neurosis is proportional to the degree of historic distortion.

Every totalitarian regime begins with rewriting history. Whoever controls the past, or the psychic foundation of the nation, controls the future. The only way to control the past is through culture. If the mindset that controls culture is not happy with the memory of the nation, it can rewrite it through books, films, media, any form of communication. Media connects us to our past. If the connection is infiltrated with people who do not feel comfortable with the way history progressed, they can simply reshape it. The examples of this are numerous and results are devastating.

History is a Memory of Our Spirit. It has to be transmitted not controlled. Any force over the memory is a violation of the Spirit that shapes time. Reclaiming history, however harsh and unpleasant it might be for the recaller, is a personal responsibility. Knowing history and fighting for history has a therapeutic significance.
When Hitler was outlining the Holocaust, he was warned that a massive termination of Jews may cause a public outrage. Hitler dismissed the warnings by saying, "Who remembers millions of Armenians murdered in 1915?". The Armenian Genocide, executed by the Turkish government only 25 years prior, was forgotten. The Turkish government had done everything possible to silence history, manipulate it and destroy the evidence. A whole generation of Armenians, scattered all over the world as a result, was and is still traumatized by this historic injustice. The denial of history affects everyone involved. Those who are denied justice and those who deny it are equally in danger. Cutting "the mystic cords of memory", as Lincoln put it, cuts us from our tradition, from our source. And the object cut off its source floats chaotically and falls very often on the barren grounds of forgetfulness. The dynamics of the fall is the same whether it's a distorted legacy of one person or of a whole nation. This fall is experienced by many to some degree, and, perhaps, it was experienced most dramatically by Hamlet, the insane prince of Denmark, who lamented before his untimely death that "the chain of times has been broken."

Lincoln the Rail-Splitter

by Yervand Kochar

This Norman Rockwell painting "Lincoln the Railsplitter," which shows a young Abraham Lincoln before he became U.S. president, will be shown in public for the first time in years after being bought by a museum for $1.6 million.

The Butler Institute of American Art bought the painting Nov. 30 in a sale at Christie's Auction House in New York. The previous owner was Texas billionaire and former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot.
The acquisition was announced Sunday. The painting will be unveiled Feb. 16.

The mystery of Abraham Lincoln was in his ability to unite the most opposing fractions of society while maintaining a divisive position. This ability to transcend the opposites made him a subject of claim from diametrically opposed entities and worldviews. Like Hegel in philosophy, Lincoln was equally claimed by schools of thought that would shoot each other at the encounter, and many, in fact, did.
Lincoln became an inspiration for Republicans and Democrats, evangelical conservatives and liberal-progressives alike. Even ever dull communists and ever angry radical socialists scraped a spark of inspiration from the mounting figure of Lincoln. This inspiration in itslef is encouragable, but after every group had shaped its own statue of Lincoln according to its own manual we've lost the real Lincoln. Lincoln turned into a concept and as every concept began to be manipulated to fit ideologies and socio-political insecurities. And as in the case of everything under the sun, the most insecure and the most unrelated ideologies manipulated Lincoln the most and claimed him the strongest.

In reality, there was and there is only one Lincoln. Many politicians have comapred and continue comparing themselves to Lincoln without understanding that what transformed that poor tall Midwestern fellow into Abraham Lincoln was not his external attributes or his immideate surrounding.
Today many 'Lincoln wannabe' polticians believe that being young and charismatic, going from rags to riches, advocating the rights of opressed, or even coming from Springfield, IL is what makes the real Abraham Lincoln.
This is a 'Victoria's Secret' version of Lincoln.
In fact, being shot in the back of a head for uncompromisingly fighting an unpopular war is what makes the real Abrahm Lincoln.

It is really sad that 150 years after the Civil War, the mindset against which Lincoln fought all his life and by which he was eventually murdered, finalized the process of hijacking his legacy.

Through the ongoing “sissification” and castration of society, we ended up with an image of Lincoln as benign pacifist, kind and loving father who united the nation. We were given a half-portrait of a man and were tought to ignore the fact that before unifying the country, he divided it. He did not unify by his goodness alone, but by a 'terrible swift sword'. He united by burning down cities, by sacrificing men in thousands and by destroying an entire civilization.
We are sold the image of Lincoln the lawyer, but before becoming a lawyer he was a rail-splitter, a ferocious wrestler who upon his arrival to a new town would challenge the strongest man around and beat him unconscious in front of an amazed crowd.
Let us not forget the toughness of the man.
He was neither a pacifist in his personal life nor in his politics; he was a fighter, a warrior. It is only on the background of this wild midwestern force that we can outline and appreciate his kindness and goodness. It is also important to remember that it was not only his innate kindness that made him great but also his strong sense of justice.

Justice is a balance of mercy and severity. In this perspective, there is no doubt that Lincoln was a kind and good willing man. When Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, he claimed that he surrendered to Lincoln’s goodness as much as to Grant’s army. Lincoln’s personal anxieties about the tragic war are legendary and his love for all of his fellow Americans, both, North and South, are beyond dispute. But in order to get a real picture of a man, we have to acknowledge the other side of his personality. The side that was there to kill and bring justice through punishing war. The strength of conviction that would stop in front of nothing, the ability to sacrifice other men’s and ultimately his own life for an ideal.
This is the image that was erased by the scribes and Pharisees of modern American scholarship who turned Lincoln into an anti-war marxist hero in order to suit their frightened worldview.
Through the media they painted an image of Lincoln in watercolors and hang it in their plastic exhibition halls. And as they would glorify this new image they could not even imagine that if they had happened to live in the time of Lincoln (and some did), they would be the first to eternally ban his image from display.
The mindset that glorifies Lincoln today is the one that crucified him yesterday and will deny and accuse him every time he returns.

But somewhere there in the forgotten attic of our national memory hangs another image of Lincoln. It is an image carved with a nail on a rusted iron, an image that can scare one in a fierce battle. It is an image that his friend saw when he compared Lincoln’s look to an Indian chief entering an enemy camp. It is an image that is so deeply engraved into the Southern psyche that many still cannot forget and forgive it for destruction he brought upon them and their families. In short, it is an image that we have to come in terms with, otherwise we are doomed to see it trough the eyes of those who never really understood the man and never appreciated what the man did.

Abolitionist Origins of the Party of Lincoln

by Yervand Kochar


On February 11, 1790 two Quaker delegations, one from New York and the other from Philadelphia, presented petitions to the House calling for the federal Government to put an immediate end to the African slave trade. The petition divided the House and the issue of slavery, which had been bothering many since the formation of the Republic, all of sudden, emerged, with an inexplicable force.
The fact that one of the petitioners, Warner Mifflin, “a shaking Quaker” with an arguable sanity, had actually confessed that his antislavery vision had come to him after he was struck by lightning in the thunderstorm was not helping the anti-slavery delegates to make their case. In order to save the young Republic from disintegration and after a long and fiery debate in the Congress, the opponents of slavery choose to settle for silence.

Western Mifflin was dismissed and with grounding the electricity that was moving the man, America has missed its first opportunity to obtain an electric bulb. The country was not ready, yet, to illuminate its path with electricity and the darkness that followed was a terrible testimony to that incapacity. The Southern statesmen were colorful, as usual, in reminding the Sectional Compromise at the Constitutional Convention, whereby “the southern states for this very principle gave into what might be termed the navigation law of the eastern and western states,” a concession granted in return for retention of the slave trade for twenty years.
What it also reminded of was the fact that the country, based on the idea of liberty and justice for all, was also formed on the compromise of the same idea and that “the effort to make the Revolution truly complete seemed diametrically opposed to remaining a united nation.”

It is baseless to claim that slavery was considered a normal state of affairs in the minds of men of 1790’s. Many opposed slavery from the beginning and many politicians and citizens alike knew its evil. “Slavery was an unmentionable family secret” and the divided family chose to avoid revealing it for a time being in the best hope that it would die on its own accord.
Yet, it was not dying. The escapist meditations of humanity on the temporary nature of evil, and the strong faculty of self persuasion on the fact that evil may perish naturally, manifested once again and postponed the resolution of the thorn of an issue that slavery was. The Union was preserved and so was slavery.

The Quakers went back labeled for their doubtable sanity, the House resumed to its conventional procedures, the slavery continued to flourish and some people became very angry with the ways the things were developing in the land.
In some people, whose allegiance to the principles of good God dominated over their commitment to keep the Union at any cost, that anger magnified with every passing day. The inconsistency in handling the freedom, on which the country was based, was seen as the beginning of the end of the same country… and they worked hard to facilitate that end.

The fight was taken from political to religious field. The Baptist Church split on its moral interpretation of slavery. The church leaders in the North viewed slavery as a crime against God while many Southern leaders claimed that slavery was justified by the Good Book. They claimed that blacks were the descendants of the Egyptians who enslaved Hebrews and therefore they were being punished by a freedom-loving nation. 50 years before the first shot of the Civil War was fired, the Baptist church divorced from within. The Southern Baptist Church emerged as an independent unit. The State would follow shortly.
Yet, shortly before that, another unit fell apart under pressure. In the early 1850’s Whigs’ interregional alliance disintegrated leaving the political stage open for seemingly long and uninterrupted Democratic soliloquy.

The Democrats found themselves in the leading role, to be more precise, in the only role left to play. The long and unchallenged dominance of the predominantly pro-slavery party was imminent.

There was no organized resistance to balance the Democratic dominance but there were many furious people around. They perhaps did not even hear about Warner Mifflin’s awkward case but they were certainly acting as if struck by lightning themselves.

These people were anti-administrative candidates running on disparate tickets. There was no power that could bring this diverse group of people under one umbrella, except for rain, perhaps. And to the astonishment of many it rained that dry season. The rain was the cry of people who toiled for centuries for others and did not have a voice to complain about it but they certainly had an ability to call rain.


In 1856 a portion of this eclectic bunch of anti-administration candidates was elected to the House to challenge the Democratic dominance and, after a period of coalescing, took control of a chamber. Once in charge they became known as the Republican Party. Four years later, the Republicans would capture both chambers and Presidency provoking the secession and war.
Who were these people and what brought them together to form a party?
One common characteristic that radiates from all the available historic facts and intuition is that they were very passionate, rebellious and radical. And the issue that was shaping their temperament before they joined their forces together was the deep hatred of the existence of slavery and the agenda of its elimination at root.
“The divers group of anti-administration representatives who took their seats shortly before the speakership contest became a coherent ideological coalition during the balloting. That is, they coalesced and elected a speaker on the basis of a single issue: slavery. Nathaniel Banks, an anti-slavery representative form Massachusetts, was elected by a three vote margin over William Aiken, a Democrat from South Carolina- ironically the first state that would break form the Union {Y.K}- thus establishing the first national victory for the fledgling party.
Once elected, Banks organized the House around the anti-slavery tents, laying the groundwork for the party’s further development in subsequent Congresses.
The Republican Party emerged as a single issue, anti-slavery coalition at the institutional level as early as 1855.”

Today the majority is somehow successfully convinced that slavery was not the cause of the war. We heard numerous stories of Lincoln being a racist and not caring about slaves per se. The whole idea that brought those young and passionate people together is reduced to an economic struggle by not allowing slavery to expand into the Western territories. We are taught that it was not the abolition of slavery but rather the issue of its expansion into the Western territories that caused the war.
Formally, that was the argument without a doubt.
But there are two peculiar facts that bother many historians and do not make any sense within the frames of that picture. The facts are the following. Slavery was allowed to expand in Texas, the closest state to the slave populated states. Yet, in 5 years only 30 slaves were brought to Texas. Slavery was not expanding; slavery had no chance to expand economically or physically. The Civil War might have been absolutely avoided. The debate and passions that rose were absolutely baseless from the given perspective.

The whole argument about expansion was a matter of a principal; it was a debate about an Idea rather than a real territorial issue. It was a defining moment in choosing the philosophy for the Expanding America. Would it expand freely and by promoting freedom or would it expand on a compromise of freedom? For those who claim that slavery was not the cause of the war it will be refreshing to reflect on the fact that the war was absolutely possible to avoid. The premise of expansion of slavery had no real implication, it was a philosophical premise and the physical war that followed was a war for a philosophical definition. It was a war for the future caused mostly by a compromised past. It was an attempt to jump up to the bar set by the Revolution, and since the bar was set way high for times it took a very tall man to make the jump.

Abraham Lincoln was 6 foot 4 inches tall and the election of such a tall and awkward looking man was the second most peculiar fact of that troubled period. Lincoln was not fitting the position by any standard of 1860’s (and perhaps 2000’s as well). He was an obscure frontiersman with no outstanding achievements and an extremely unusual look.
What distinguished Lincoln from more probable candidates was his very strange political record. From 1854 to 1860 Abraham Lincoln delivered 175 anti-slavery speeches, rejected a Kansas-Nebraska bill that would give people sovereignty over their decision whether to have slaves or not, and while in the US House introduced a bill for a compensated emancipation. He was adamant in opposing the expansion of slavery on the federal level. In short, slavery and its suspension was the only political issue that Lincoln cared about throughout his career. And, strangely enough, that kind of a radical record was what appealed to the majority of the Republicans and of the Northern population at the critical moment.

The jump to the universal ideals of The Declaration of Independence had to be taken from the Constitutional platform, which meant stepping on the Constitution out of the physical necessity.
Lincoln knew that by not allowing slavery to expand into the Western territories ideologically, inevitably, meant the end of physical slavery in the South, where it was thriving. It meant an indirect abolition, one and only way to avoid the outright violation of the Constitution and not losing the support of the moderates in the North. Lincoln was the only man in a position to maneuver like that and he did.
Once a President, Lincoln never attempted to avoid the unconstitutional invasion of the South. Avoiding war meant one thing- continuation of slavery in the South and an ideological defeat over the future of the Expanding America. The war in its essence was fought for the future, for the definition of the future.

That definition was very old, though. It could be summarized by one simple word and a complex interpretation of that word that drove many passionate men and women into that radical abolitionist group of rebels emerging as a Republican Party.
The word was Freedom and the interpretation was that in order to keep that freedom for oneself one had to give it to others. The ways of giving where diverse in their intensities but the intention of giving moved the givers strongly in a united and a well-coordinated move. That drive to share the freedom was hard to locate and many just acted it out naturally, from their guts. That drive was activated, though, by a very familiar sound that men and women were exposed to on daily basis.
The sound was such an organic part of their everyday lives that they did not even realized how that sound penetrated, settled and transformed their hearts.


It was a sound coming out of a small town church walls at least every Sunday morning. The sound was coming through the dramatically archetypal language of preachers who were reminding people about the gift of freedom through ages. Independently of each other but regularly, the preachers revived the idea of spreading the Word -not keeping it for oneself but giving it to everyone- the Word of God that was translated socially as Freedom. Spreading Freedom meant spreading the Word. The evangelical instincts of the early Republicans were stronger than they thought but they became very truthful re-enactors of the story of that Word and the stories that happened because of that Word.

If the secession and slavery resided on the legal platform and used the law as their argument, abolitionism was born out of the moral instinct and relied strongly on the faith in the transforming power of that morality. With abolitionist movement legalizing itself as a Republican party, America stepped into a stage of its political development defined by a conflicting dynamics between two irreconcilable poles. From now on, everyone would be either a secessionist or an abolitionist.
The ideological middle would be a physical impossibility because secessionist would always strive to legally isolate their singular freedom from the universal freedom and abolitionists would consider their individual freedom morally possible only through its universal expansion. America began and continues to vibrate between these archetypal opposites of law and morality, suspension and expansion, practicality and idealism.



The Republican agenda throughout ages was driven by the abolitionist impulse, which in turn stemmed from an evangelical idealism. The abolition of slavery in all its various future manifestations became the engine of the Republican machine. The fight against Communism was nothing else than the continuation of the Civil War; the fight against terrorism and its enslaving ideology of fear was the next inevitable step in the abolitionist logic. However distant and unconnected these events may seem politically and historically, spiritually it has been always the same war, as Lincoln put it prophetically, “the eternal struggle between right and wrong.”
Two years prior to his Presidency and the war, on 9/11 1858, Lincoln said,
“Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors." This statement was more than an idealistic exclamation. It was a strategic hint to generations of which ours picked it up, probably, most dramatically. Spreading freedom meant infinitely more than means to a national defense.
Spreading freedom was a goal in itself. It was a moral responsibility. Spreading freedom for abolitionists meant the same as spreading the Good News for the early Christians. The passions, the militant spirit and the readiness of sacrifice characterize both movements for these movements, essentially, originated in the same spiritual impulse.
‘Fear is a beginning of wisdom,’ says the Psalm. Both early Christians and early abolitionists were very aware of and frightened by the metaphysical dangers contained in Freedom (or in the Good News, respectively.)


Freedom is not a simple gift of God. It is a responsibility, a torch that needs to be passed on; otherwise it will burn the beholder. If shared it magnifies the beholder, if contained it tortures and eventually destroys. This burning power of sharing is based on a physical principle of containment. Simply, it is too strong of a power to hold, yet, the process of its passing takes an enormous energy and focus that, often, manifests as war. This is why many reject freedom individually and in many instances even nationally. And this is, exactly, what was happening in the pre Civil War America.

By not allowing the Union to dissolve, Abraham Lincoln created a platform for the Expanding America, which meant expanding freedom. The Olympic fire of Freedom that was traced most notably to the Ancient Greece’s Democracy had finally arrived to America and it became America’s responsibility to pass it back on and spread it through yet dark corners of the human landscape.
America was chosen as the host country of the Fire and it took a Civil War to secure the status.
Yet, people, long before any recorded history, had carried the torch that ended up in the hands of a statue on the Ellis Island.
This Fire traveled through centuries and changed countries and continents, it transformed societies, spread its light through cultures and formed civilizations of which the Western is the freshest in our contemporary memory.
In time, the fire was translated into a law, and Freedom was contained in the vessel of Democracy. Whenever, the alchemists give the vessel more importance than to the substance, the substance blows the vessel, as in the case of the Civil War and civil wars, and the substance moves until it finds a better vessel and alchemists who do not attempt to store it but rather to work with it.

Although, abolitionism was adopted as the Republican platform, it would be unfair to claim that the Republicans invented it. On contrary, the abolitionism invented the Republicans. Abolitionist and its opposite secessionist tendencies are present within the same party, whether it is Republican or Democrat, and in times one or the other pole prevails as a guideline. The excessive application of either of the opposites intensifies the other to the degree that results in an open confrontation known politically as a civil war.

This same vibration between opposites, though, occurs within every human being and it is on this individual level where one can detect the tremendous Mystery of Transformation, which is caused by this vibration. The mystery is that secessionism in politics and individually is caused by its opposite, namely, the abolitionist desire to involve more, to accommodate and incorporate. The broad focus and desire to expand inevitably result in an isolation and urge to protect and, eventually, to secede. The abolitionism, in turn, is caused by the desire to secede, to stay focused on a simple issue, to be isolated from the broad spectrum of events. It is no surprise that the individuals that do not intend to get involved into universal matters become the promoters and martyrs of those matters and the ideologues of universality end up protecting their private property. When the war in Iraq began, the farmer in Ohio, who had been solely occupied with his land’s fertility, started to genuinely care about the enslaved people in Iraq, and an intellectual in Manhattan who was actively writing and conferring for the cause of universal liberties, suddenly shifted her focus on healthcare. In other words, there are people who always call for the revolution but the revolution is made but people who always try to avoid it.

There were times in history when the Republicans abandoned their abolitionist platform, there were even instances when the Democrats adopted it, yet, the impulse that created the Republican Party always reemerges strongly in the times of crisis. The original instinct that brought various people into a unit is historically stronger than any temporary platform the unit occupies and as far as the unit is aware of its origin it will behave in a predictable pattern.
The movements that originate on a single principle tend to get complex in their evolution. It is hard to focus on one issue and it is much easier to complicate it by a multilateral approach. Very often a focus on a single issue is compromised by a genuine attempt to resolve all the issues. The danger that is evident in this process is the probability of loosing the focus altogether whereas staying focused on one important point may eventually resolve all other problems.
What is usually being neglected in the growth is childhood. Yet, history is the most important strategic asset a nation, a party or an individual can have. History is an account and understanding of the great mystery of being connected to the source, to the origin. The entity that is truthful to its source is undefeatable because the source, the origin has a power to create and whatever has a power to create has a power to revive.

The origins of the Republican Party are strongly Evangelical. Its metaphysical-abolitionist purpose is to share and unconditionally spread the Word of God, which surpasses all the religious, mental and racial boundaries when translated into a more accessible terminology of human Freedom. A very simple word that resonates in every human soul but one with a very complex interpretation that may cause a war between two brothers let alone nations.

Democratic Convention - "THE CHICAGO SURRENDER"

Here is another interesting fact from 1860's as found in "Lincoln" by D.H. Donald and explored in The Wounded Warrior.
This traces the origins of the split on war that still torments the Democratic Party.

Poor Old Mr. Peace Democracy's Plan for stopping that mad bull, Rebellion.

...Then, in the last days of August [1864], with the assembling of the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, the outlook for Lincoln's reelection suddenly brightened. When he asked the newspaperman Noah Brooks to be his informal observer at the convention, the President predicted the outcome:

"They must nominate a Peace Democrat on a war platform, or a War Democrat on a peace platform; and I personally can't say that I care much which they do."

The Democrats lived up to his expectations. Their platform announced that "after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,... justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand... a cessation of hostilities," with a view to ending the war "on the basis of the Federal Union of the States." It was not exactly a peace platform, for the Democrats, like the Republicans, were pledged to preserve the Union; but the condemnation of the war and the call for an end of fighting made it easy to brand the platform "the Chicago Surrender." Then the convention nominated General George H. McClellan, the leading War Democrat, for President. The two wings of the Democratic party had struck a bargain: the Peace Democrats, most conspicuously represented by Vallandigham, dictated the platform while their opponents named the presidential candidate. In effect, the Democrats chose to make party harmony their principal goal, even at the risk of defeat in the election.

From all quarters McClellan's friends warned that the platform was a "wet blanket"; "universally condemned," it had probably been "concocted to destroy their candidate." After some delay the general disavowed the peace plank. He could not look in the face of his "gallant comrades of the army and navy, who have survived so many bloody battles, and tell them that their labors and die sacrifice of so many of our slain and wounded brethren had been in vain." But die damage was done. As one of McClellan's admirers said, his letter accepting the nomination of a party on whose platform he could not run amounted to "twaddle and humbug."

Horses of War and Peace

by Yervand Kochar


Yervand Kochar 'Horrors of War' Yerevan, 1962 Oil on canvas, 290 x 210 cm www.maestrokochar.com

The first shot of the Civil War was fired at 4:30 a.m. April 12,1861 when the Confederate artillery bombarded Fort Sumter. Hours later when the fort exhausted its ammunition and surrendered both sides were astonished when they realized that no single person was killed in the heavy bombardment. The only casualty of that day and the first casualty of the war was a horse in the fort.
The Civil War was the last massive war in which cavalry played a decisive role.

The invention of an engine turned an image of a man on horseback to a museum. The horse was gone from the battlefield and with it was gone the poetry of the war. The idea of knighthood so insolubly associated with the horse glittered for the last time at the Civil War.

The attachment of the Civil War Generals to their horses was legendary. U.S. Grant, being an excellent horseman himself, loved and revered horses. Once he had a teamster tied to a tree for six hours for mistreating a horse.
General Robert Lee’s charger “Traveler” carried him throughout the war, following his master’s lengthy maneuvers with unexplainable freshness.
William T. Sherman’s half thoroughbred bay “Sam” was “as calm and steady as his brave master”. In his poem “Sheridan’s Ride” Thomas Read immortalized General Phil Sheridan’s horse “Winchester” who saved the Union Army in the Shenandoah Valley by carrying Sheridan back to his army at Cedar Creek a distance of twenty miles with a speed by far exceeding horse’s nominal physical capacities. General Albert Sidney Johnston’s horse was named “Fire-eater”. “It stood patiently like a veteran when the bullets and shells hurtled about him and his master, but when the command came to charge, he was all fire and vim, like that Sunday in April 1862 the first day of the bloody battle of Shiloh (Antietam)”.
“The horse of the commanding officer was as well known to the rank and file as the general himself, and the soldiers were as affectionately attached to the animal as was the master”.
This harmony of man and horse has been seen throughout history. “The horse inspired such awe in ancient man that he often thought of the horse as the power behind certain natural elements. In India, ancient gods drove chariots across the sky, some chariots carrying the sun. In Christianity, devastation was brought to fight evil by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. A cult object from Trundholm in Denmark represents the power of the sun itself, with a horse pulling the light of day across the sky”. In the Greek mythology “the centaur was a magnificent creature that had a body which was half horse and half man. He was renowned for both extreme physical strength and great wisdom…The centaur may have evolved from people who first saw horses with men on their backs and believed them to be one creature”.
The father of Western philosophy, Plato introduced one of the most powerful images of a man as that of a chariot led by two horses. The horses were called Appetite (bodily desires) and Spirit (passions), the Charioteer was called Reason.
The same Greeks, and the Romans, associated the horse with war, and also the wind, water and thunder.
And indeed, from the time this notion was conceived in Ancient Greece up until the American Civil War, there would be conducted hardly any large or small scale war without a horse as a decisive factor on the battlefield.

In the early stages of the Civil War the Confederate cavalry was superior to the Union’s. “The lack of good highways had forced Southerners to travel by horseback from boyhood, while in the North a generation had been riding in wheeled vehicles”. “The South had been riding before the war, the North had been driven”. However, in the course of the war “the brilliant Confederate Generals such as “Jeb” Stuart, Wade Hampton and Nathan Bedford Forrest were matched by such Union Generals as Philip Sheridan and James Wilson”.
And so the horses became casualties of the war. They witnessed, fought and died with their masters. Yet, there was one difference. Horses were the only impartial creatures of the war. There was neither North nor South for horses. As numerous times in history, once again horses came to help people-anyone, everyone.
It is not in the scope of this article to pay a full tribute to these creatures that so dramatically enhanced man’s evolution in nature. Of all the animals who helped man to rise to his current status, it was the horse that was equally indispensable in agriculture, transportation, warfare, sports, entertainment and many other fields of human endeavor. It was the horse that inspired humans in arts and it was the energy and the presence of the horse that gave a birth to engine and the Industrial Revolution respectively.

These creatures, the earthbound angels, the messengers of progress, wisdom, beauty and might were worshiped by all cultures, ancient and modern alike.
“…Celts believed that after death the soul of a person was transported to the land of the dead on horseback believing them to possess special powers worthy to the task”. In the Hindu ‘Brihadaranyanka Upanishad’ the horse is a symbol of the cosmos.
According to Arthurian legend, once found, the horse with a magical bridle would turn back into a woman, having been previously transformed. This association of a horse with a woman, or a feminine beginning, is certainly not accidental as nothing is accidental in myths and legends.

“C.G. Jung claimed that the horse represents ‘the mother within us’ explaining that the animal has a power, understanding, intuition and magical side that is distinctive from anything else in nature.”

In the bloody war between brothers, in the war were masculine aggression reached the apex of horror and was about to destroy the civilization; it was the cavalry, the horse that brought some glamour.
It was the Feminine Spirit silently following men in their insanity, being their only cure, their unique link to beauty and peace.
It was the Mother, the ancient mirror maja, the eternal Virgin Sophia in the mystical form and reflection of a horse, which once again did not leave her children in the time of confusion. The horse was the only reminder of home and peace, the only redeemer of a suffering soldier, the Mother who will eventually gallop her children lost in the war with their own selves to their Real Home in Freedom!