Advent 2

 Volume 2 (Annu to Baltic): Antietam, the Battle of the.

I wake to the news that Joe Biden has issued a pardon to his son Hunter. Had Trump taken such a step, there would be quite proper liberal outrage. Enough said.

Today's entry again finds us in the United States. That crucible of the American Dream, the Civil War, heated to its bloodiest day on 17 September 1862 on and around the banks of the River Antietam. Thule de Thulstrup's artistic imagining of the battle is reproduced below.

The outcome of the battle was that the incursion into the Union States by Lee's field army was rebuffed by McClellan's larger force. McClellan has been judged by history as over-cautious. His President, Abraham Lincoln, came to share that view and dismissed him in November 1862 for his failure to pursue Lee's retreating army.

Lincoln stands to me as the exemplar of how a legal traing can incubate decency. Consider these words from his first Inaugural Address delivered on 4 March 1861and ask yourself whether either of the candidates in the recent election would be caable of such modest dignity and sagacity:

The Chief Magistrate derives all his authorityfrom the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

That term 'the Chief Magistrate' refers to the head of state and is an echo of the same terminology used by sixteenth century constitutionalist Sir Thomas Smith. Legal theory does sometimes have a purpose.