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I was born the same year as the
Cleveland Civil War Roundtable (1956), which means I grew up in the
1960s. As I reflect on the 60s, I marvel at the density of events.
From 1963-68, we experienced the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK,
Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and three freedom riders in Mississippi,
not to mention the less tragic murder of George Lincoln Rockwell,
founder of the American Nazi Party. Assassination was a common
political recourse in 1960s America.
We had riots breaking out in many of
our cities. I know the ‘66 Hough riots here in Cleveland were
terrible, but in Detroit, where I grew up, the ‘67 riots were even
worse. They raged for five days and order was restored only after
President Johnson sent in 5000 troopers from the 82nd Airborne to
join the 8000 National Guardsmen already deployed by Michigan
Governor George Romney (Mitt’s dad). 13,000 armed military personnel
patrolled the streets of America’s fifth largest city. Hard to
believe, but it happened.
Meanwhile, the Cold War raged on,
sparking wars and near wars around the globe. The Cuban
Missile Crisis pushed us to the brink in ‘62 as did the uprising in
Czechoslovakia in ‘68. We seemed constantly on the edge of
Armageddon. I remember in elementary school having nuclear attack
drills with the same regularity as fire drills. Each night
throughout the decade, the Vietnam War was broadcast into America’s
living rooms in full color, allowing folks back home to experience
the Tet Offensive, the My Lai massacre, the bombing of the North,
and the Cambodian incursion in a way American civilians had not
experienced war since, well, the Civil War. Late in the
decade, college campuses across the country became scenes of almost
constant turmoil with bombings, riots and near riots; my
recollection is that there was a general belief that there really
just might be a revolution.
As backdrop to this unrest and
uncertainty, we had NASA launching men into space every few months.
Consider this timeline: Following the launch pad fire in January ‘67
that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, the
Apollo program was grounded while engineers worked to figure out and
fix what happened. Less than 18 months later, in October ‘68,
NASA launched the first manned Apollo mission into space, Apollo 7,
followed in rapid succession by Apollos 8, 9, and 10, culminating
with Apollo 11’s moon landing in July ‘69. That’s 5 manned space
missions in 9 months – the last one putting a man on the moon.
Believe it or not, what got me
thinking about the denseness of the 1960s was reading about the even
greater denseness of the 1860s in the many sesquicentennial
timelines crossing my desk. What an incredibly dense and complex
stage of history Abraham Lincoln led this country through. Even
without the accelerant of instantaneous electronic communications,
events in 1861 were moving at breakneck speed. At this time 150
years ago, one of the many balls being juggled by Lincoln was the
threat of European intervention on the side of the Confederacy, in
particular England and/or France. That pressure peaked in the 10
months from November 1861 through September 1862 and only ended with
the repulse of Lee’s northern invasion at Antietam.
This dangerous period began with
the US Navy’s arrest in international waters of Confederate envoys
James Mason and John Slidell on board the British mail steamer,
Trent. News of the illegal seizure cheered Union supporters at
home, but enraged both Queen Victoria and England’s Parliament. The
situation quickly escalated into a near state of war forcing Lincoln
to walk a paper-thin line between confrontation and capitulation.
“One war at a time,” Lincoln is famously quoted as saying when
instructing Secretary of State William Seward to quietly release the
Confederate envoys and end the impasse. (Read
more on the Trent Affair.)
Dense, complex times, indeed. Makes
what we're going through now seem kind of mild by comparison, don’t
you think? |
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