Today’s political reality exists under a canopy of terrorism. Not terrorism as an actuality, for the most part, but terrorism as a perpetual threat, as the creature under the bed.  True, the creature may not want to attack you. The creature may not even exist. However, in order to confirm or deny this information, we have to look under the bed to face it. This is too much for most; so, instead of looking under the bed, people pontificate. “We must limit civil rights in order to prevent terrorism,” says one side. “We must not limit civil rights because this legitimizes the terrorists,” goes another. And television’s talking heads react to one another, without ever questioning whether there is terrorism – or, more precisely, whether the terrorism they are discussing is the right one.

In the years before World War II, the canopy was Communism. The Mafia, said J. Edgar Hoover, was a mere conspiracy theory – but the Communists were very real. Infiltration in our schools, in our churches, in our Boy Scouts! The Reds would stop at nothing, and their brand of evil proved an insidious trap whose bait seemed most attractive to intellectuals.  In her book Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, published in 2009, author Susan Jaccoby attempts to provide an intellectual history of the American left/right conflicts of the late 1940s. These resonate right up until the present day and seed the public fights over civil rights, terrorism, individual liberties, and defining the public good.

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To say that there were significant challenges facing Abraham Lincoln as he assumed the Presidency of the United States would be an understatement. Between the time that he was elected in November, 1860, and the time that he was sworn in during March, 1861, several southern states seceded from the union and began to form their own government. The nation was being torn apart over the issues of slavery and state’s rights. Lincoln was taking office tasked not only with leading the country, but also with holding it together. Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, given against a bleak backdrop, made an imperfect, yet effective, case for saving the Union.

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In 1861, Americans went to war with each other to determine if their young republic could endure as a unified nation or if it should be divided between the North and the South. The question of whether or not states could voluntarily secede from the Union was decided in battle over the following four years. Although they lost, Southerners still believed in the ideals of the Confederacy. Northerners, however, felt that the outcome of the war vindicated their position that the Union should be maintained, and that they, as victors, should be in a position of superiority over the South.[1] Whether victorious or defeated, most Americans were traumatized by the war, and Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) was a convenient target for blame. As its President, Davis was the embodiment of the Confederacy to many people on both sides of the war. The responses of Americans to Davis' post war public life, from his capture and imprisonment in 1865 to his speeches and writings in the 1870s and 1880s, suggested that although the Civil War was over, they were still a divided people.

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