Is Trump the Next Lincoln?

The surprising historical parallels between the two

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

“It’s déjà vu all over again.” Yogi Berra

“Americans, all, we are not enemies, but friends- We have sacred ties of affection which, although strained by passions, let us hope can never be broken.” Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address

My daughter and son-in-law recently gifted me for my birthday the excellent book, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, by Erik Larson. Larson’s book is a detailed, in-depth history of the five months from the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 to the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, marking the start of the Civil War.

As I read it, the parallels to our own time, right now, are striking. The more I read and reflect, the more I see lessons to be learned from our past, pointing to a better way forward.

The first thing I noticed was the similarity in the state of the union then and now. In 1860, the 34 states in the United States were divided into two distinct factions: the slave states of the south and the non-slave states to the north. The differences were stark and seemingly not subject to compromise. Both sides held beliefs they attributed to moral or divine right, beliefs for which they were willing to, and eventually did, shed blood to defend. This book provides a strong argument that the Civil War was anything other than a battle of those who defended slavery and those who wished to eliminate it. No nation had ever fought a civil war under such circumstances or has since.

Today, our country is again divided into two factions that claim a different and incompatible vision of the United States moving forward. For simplicity, we can label them the left and the right. The left is characterized by a triune of identity politics, climate catastrophism, and gender fluidity. Its ideology is that of critical race theory in the guise of DEI. The right seeks to conserve traditional values of meritocracy, the reality of biological sex, and allegiance to our Constitution as written. There are other differences as well. It is not yet settled whether these two groups will be able to find some middle ground to avoid conflict, including possible armed conflict.

The Civil War was the first big test of whether our nation could survive intact as a constitutional democratic republic. The outcome is now history and was, fortunately, yes it could, but at the cost of 700,000 lives- more than the United States lost in WWI and WWII combined.

Today, the unprecedented immigration crisis, aided and abetted by the Biden/Harris administration, presents us with the greatest assault on our national sovereignty since the Civil War. A nation with no borders, no respect for citizenship, and with no rule of law is no nation at all. We have witnessed a wave of illegal immigration through our southern border numbering an estimated 12 to 20 million unvetted immigrants in outright defiance of our laws, benignly overseen by the present administration. In any reasonable universe, this would have been grounds for impeachment of the current president.  

The similarities between President James Buchanan and Joseph Biden are impossible to ignore. Both proved to be feckless individuals who abdicated their responsibilities and oath of office. In the case of Buchanan, this allowed the country to descend into civil war. In Biden’s case, this created an immigration crisis that has irrevocably altered our nation. Both men had, in the words of Larson, “let all this come to pass without making any substantive effort to stop it.”

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

Allowing for the differences in communication and media dissemination of information, largely by word of mouth, telegraph, and newspapers, Lincoln was widely painted by the southern leadership and media as an existential threat to their culture and lifestyle, no less than Trump has been painted as a Hitlerian fascist by the left, the legacy media, and anti-Trump coalition.

There were rumors of assassination swirling around Lincoln even before he took the oath of office and his entry into Washington, DC for his inauguration was done in secrecy because of threats to kill him before he reached the capital. We have witnessed an unprecedented two assassination attempts of Trump before the election, one of which came within a hair’s breadth of killing him, with additional plots by Iran disrupted by the FBI. We can only pray for God’s divine protection given the proven incompetence of the Secret Service.  

Given what followed the election of Lincoln and fall of Fort Sumter, I can only hope that we will learn from our history and that cooler heads and a spirit of restoration will prevail in the coming months, and that we will be spared the chaos and conflict of the past. My prayer is that our country as a whole will do a slow count and give the incoming administration a chance. I think that the election was proof that most Americans are unhappy with the status quo and looking for a change, a real change, not some minimally altered version of the past four years.

May God bless and preserve President-Elect Donald Trump and may God bless and preserve these United States of America.

Richard T. Bosshardt, MD, FACS, Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, Founding Fellow of FAIR in Medicine

My book, The Making of a Plastic Surgeon: Two Years in the Crucible Learning the Art and Science, is available on Amazon in eBook or paperback. I think you will find it entertaining and informative. Others have.