Jefferson Davis had just promoted General John Bell Hood and Hood was eager to defend Atlanta and fight.
General Grant had confidence in his friend, William T. Sherman, to advance the Union cause in Georgia. Atlanta was an important city at the crossroads of four different railroads and it was a strategic site for both armies.
On July 20, 1864, Hood initiated the Battle of Peach Tree Creek which ended horribly for the confederacy. Not only did that battle fail to move the Union forces out, it resulted in nearly twice as many casualties for the Confederacy as for the Union. It also gave General Sherman some insight into Hood’s poor judgment and impatience. The Union won the Battle of Peach Tree Creek and it prepared them for Hood’s next move.
That came two days later on July 22, 1864 in what would come to be known as the Battle of Atlanta. It was a turning point. The city would not fall for another few months, but the Union victory in Atlanta boosted Northern confidence at a time it needed boosting. This improved morale would lead to Lincoln’s re-election and Sherman’s victorious March to the Sea. The Battle of Atlanta was a turning point in the Civil War. In hindsight, it is easy to see the direct line from that hot July day to Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse the following April.
A hot July day 110 years after the Battle of Atlanta, a different crisis was brewing. A duly appointed special counsel subpoenaed certain tape recordings and documents relating to conversations from the President of the United States in regard to criminal cases against some of the president’s staff. The President refused to provide these items and moved to quash the subpoena claiming executive privilege.
The Court (with several members appointed by the very president now requesting to quash a subpoena) said,
The impediment that an absolute, unqualified privilege would place in the way of the primary constitutional duty of the Judicial Branch to do justice in criminal prosecutions would plainly conflict with the function of the courts under Art. III. In designing the structure of our Government and dividing and allocating the sovereign power among three co-equal branches, the Framers of the Constitution sought to provide a comprehensive system, but the separate powers were not intended to operate with absolute independence.
On that July day, 50 years ago, it was a turning point. Forced to provide evidence in cases against his underlings, the president knew he was also damning himself. He also knew – as did everyone else – that presidents were not immune from criminal process (because they are not). Indeed, this case would declare that even their executive privilege was not sacrosanct, but instead depended upon judicial review.
In the performance of assigned constitutional duties each branch of the Government must initially interpret the Constitution, and the interpretation of its powers by any branch is due great respect from the others. The President's counsel, as we have noted, reads the Constitution as providing an absolute privilege of confidentiality for all Presidential communications. Many decisions of this Court, however, have unequivocally reaffirmed the holding of Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803), that ‘(i)t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.’ Id., at 177, 2 L.Ed. 60.
United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 703.
And the law was not helping Richard Nixon. Rather than face the humiliation of impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate which he most decidedly would lose and be forced to leave office, Nixon resigned just weeks after this fateful ruling. It must have been an excruciating decision after having won such a landslide victory for re-election less than two years earlier. Nixon’s resignation brought an unelected vice president to be Commander in Chief for the first and only time in this nation’s history.
But, I digress – we are in July when sometimes things just happen that change the course of human events. Sometimes it is an idea presented in a document to which people pledge their lives, fortune, and honor. Sometimes it is armed conflict in wartime that moves the momentum one way or another. Sometimes it is a legal decision in a case you thought you would win, but didn’t.
July 22, 2024 presented yet another summertime opportunity to shape history. An impossibly compassionate, dedicated public servant put country before self this week following a convention for the other party - now fully autocratic - full of disinformation and lies.
83 years ago, before America was engaged in WWII, when racist, antisemitic America First propaganda bombarded the airwaves and were gaining in popularity even as the Nazis seemed on the brink of world domination, Harold Ickes said the following in words just as timely and profound today as they were over four score years ago,
This tide of the future, the democratic future, is ours. It is ours if we show ourselves worthy of our culture and of our heritage.
But make no mistake about it; the tide of the democratic future is not like the ocean tide--regular, relentless, and inevitable. Nothing in human affairs is mechanical or inevitable. Nor are Americans mechanical. They are very human indeed.
What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes in the dignity of man. An American is one who will fight for his freedom and that of his neighbor. An American is one who will sacrifice property, ease and security in order that he and his children may retain the rights of free men. An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
Americans have always known how to fight for their rights and their way of life. Americans are not afraid to fight. They fight joyously in a just cause.
We Americans know that freedom, like peace, is indivisible. We cannot retain our liberty if three-fourths of the world is enslaved. Brutality, injustice and slavery, if practiced as dictators would have them, universally and systematically, in the long run would destroy us as surely as a fire raging in our nearby neighbor's house would burn ours if we didn't help to put out his.
The last American president who stepped aside when he could have served four more years was, like our current president, a flawed man. But he was, just as the current president, a skilled politician who pushed through legislation that sought to help the vulnerable, improve the lives of the working person, and set America on a course to strive for something more than just monetary wealth and power. And so, despite his flaws, he was also a great man. That man once reminded a scared and divided country that,
This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South. “All men are created equal.” “Government by consent of the governed.” “Give me liberty or give me death.” Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives.
Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man’s possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.
That speech was the catalyst to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (later gutted by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2013, but I digress). That president, who despite his productivity and the expanse of the legislation he signed chose not to seek re-election. He did that for many reasons, but chief among them had to have been to put country above self. He spent the rest of his term pushing through more legislation to improve the lives of ordinary folks.
This country is certainly a physical place with identifiable borders, but it is also a powerful idea. This is a nation with a purpose whose citizens love justice and believe in the dignity of all people. It is a place where we fight for our own freedom and that of our neighbor, where we will sacrifice property, ease, and security just to retain the rights of free people. We, as Americans, have engraved in our hearts the promise that all people are created equal and are endowed with unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Every inflection, every turning point is an opportunity – to win the war against slavery, to advance voting rights not for some citizens, but for all citizens, to advance a justice system equal for all with no special classes of people able to withhold evidence or commit crimes without judgment, and to remind ourselves who we really are, even if that is mostly aspirational.
This turning point is no exception. Fight joyously in a just cause. Put out the fire in your neighbor’s house. Protect democracy. Keep the republic.
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