“YOUR
BRAVE AND EARLY FALLEN CHILD…”
Since
the beginning of the war in Iraq last year, a small tempest has
arisen in the media over whether or not George W. Bush should
attend the funerals of American servicemen and women killed in
the line of duty. As of this writing, Mr. Bush has not done so—a
decision which critics tend to view as indicative of the administration’s
preoccupation with “spin,” and the desire to avoid
any “negative” images and associations. The White
House has maintained, in its own defense, that Bush’s first
priority as commander-in-chief is to focus on the prosecution
of the war, and that to attend any one soldier’s funeral
would be to obligate the president to go to them all.
Certainly,
the administration has not helped its case with needless public
relations strictures, such as banning the media from covering
the return of coffins and body bags (or “human remains containers,”
as they’re now called in the latest, wonderful military
euphemism) from Iraq. But a quick survey of past administrations—conducted
with the help of our nation’s invaluable and obliging presidential
archivists—reveals that in fact Mr. Bush is only following
a historical precedent established by nearly all American presidents,
from every party. Our leaders have rarely attended the funerals
of servicemen or of any other individuals because, in the words
of Laura Spencer, archivist at the presidential library of President
George H.W. Bush, they “didn’t want to pick and choose,”
and because they were conscious first of their duty to the living.
Instead,
most of our presidents have confined themselves to ceremonies
that commemorated our war dead in general. Their motives for this
have generally been deduced, rather than explicit. What president,
after all, would want to state outright that he could not attend
the funeral of one casualty of war because he expected there to
be so many more?
Yet
George Washington, as in so much else, laid down an explicit precedent
on the subject—albeit in the case of a prominent civilian.
Invited to attend the funeral of Mrs. Cornelia Roosevelt, wife
of New York Senator Isaac Roosevelt, in the first year of his
presidency, Washington declined, even though the national government
was then situated in New York City. Were he to attend, our first
president wrote, “it might be difficult to discriminate
in cases which might thereafter happen.”
Even
as commander of American troops during the Revolution, Washington
attended only one funeral of an individual soldier that American
history specialists at the Library of Congress could confirm—that
of Jack Custis, his stepson and aide, who perished of camp fever
at Yorktown.
This exception would also prove to be a precedent. Lyndon Johnson,
who was tormented by the deaths sustained by American forces in
Vietnam, appears to have attended more individual funerals that
any other wartime president in our history. Yet all of these were
for men with whom he had a personal connection: a Navy pilot who
was a member of his daughter Luci’s wedding party; an Army
captain who was the son of White House correspondent Merriman
Smith; and Major General Keith Lincoln Ware, whom Johnson had
met on his tour of Vietnam in December, 1967, and who was killed
in a helicopter crash there some nine months later.
Franklin
Roosevelt, who led the nation through the bloodiest foreign war
in our history (and who was the great-great-grandson of the aforementioned
Cornelia), does not seem to have attended any individual funerals—though
like nearly all presidents he went to regular Memorial Day and
Veterans’ Day commemorations at Arlington National Cemetery,
and both he and his wife, Eleanor, visited the wounded on a number
of different occasions.
Even
presidents who have seen military service themselves have usually
refrained from attending individual services. Dwight D. Eisenhower
visited military memorials and cemeteries from London to Iwo Jima
during his foreign trips as president and president-elect—itineraries
that in and of themselves spoke to the exponential growth of American
power and influence. Yet he does not seem to have attended any
individual services during the last year of the Korean War.
Nor
did Harry Truman. Truman was hardly a squeamish man. He distinguished
himself under fire as the only president to see action in World
War I, ordered the atom-bombing of two cities, and once held a
lamp over his mother while a doctor performed a hernia operation
on her in their Missouri farmhouse. He built much of his political
career on his service connections, and was deeply involved in
Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion activities. As president,
he attended the reburial of twenty World War II dead in Arlington;
visited the memorial of the sunken battleship Arizona,
in Pearl Harbor; and always enjoyed awarding Medals of Honor to
surviving servicemen.
Presenting
a posthumous Medal of Honor to the family of a serviceman
killed in World War II, though, proved to be something else again.
Truman aide Harry Vaughn wrote that the president found the occasion,
“very distressing,” so much so that Truman never presented
another posthumous medal, or attended an individual funeral.
Woodrow
Wilson visited the graves of Truman’s comrades-in-arms at
Suresnes Cemetery in France—and invoked his visit there
over and over again during his last, desperate train tour of the
country, trying to get the American people to endorse the League
of Nations that he believed would make their sacrifice worthwhile.
Speaking in Pueblo, Colorado on September 25, 1919, the ailing
president—his speech faltering, his head throbbing so badly
that he saw double—told a cheering crowd, “I wish
some of the men who are now opposing the settlement for which
those men died could visit such a spot as that. I wish they could
feel the moral obligation that rests upon us not to go back on
those boys, but to see this thing through and make good their
redemption of the world.”
Unable
to continue, Wilson lowered his head and broke into sobs, as did
his wife and much of the audience. When the pain in his head kept
him from sleeping that night, Edith Wilson and the president’s
physician, Dr. Grayson, had the train stopped in the middle of
the prairie, and walked the stricken chief executive down a lonely
road, in the hope that some gentle exercise might help. There—in
a moment that no modern spin doctor would believe—they encountered
a wounded veteran, sitting on a front porch, and Wilson impulsively
decided to climb over a fence and talk with the young man and
his family for awhile. The encounter appeared to ease the president’s
pain—but by the following evening the tour had been canceled,
and shortly thereafter Wilson suffered the massive stroke that
left him a virtual invalid for the rest of his time in the White
House.
In
more recent years, as the idea of “closure” has taken
hold in American society, our presidents have chosen to honor
the dead in collective ceremonies. President George H.W. Bush
attended such commemorations for the dead from both the first
Iraq war, and the explosion of a gun turret aboard the U.S.S.
Iowa. President Reagan attended similar ceremonies on
four different occasions, including ones for the Marine dead in
Grenada and Lebanon; and the victims of the space shuttle Challenger
disaster. This seems like a good compromise between a president’s
obligations to the living and the dead, and it is likely that
George W. Bush and future presidents will honor the victims of
the war on terror in the same way.
Yet
just as Washington set the first precedent in this matter, the
last word should go, as usual, to Lincoln. At the dedication of
Gettysburg cemetery, of course, he gave us the greatest funeral
oration since Pericles. But more than two years before, during
the first, few weeks of the war, Lincoln had attended the funeral
of a close personal friend. It seemed to truly bring home to him
the likely cost of the conflict the country had embarked upon.
Elmer
Ellsworth had been a clerk in Lincoln’s Springfield law
office for two years, before moving to New York City and becoming
colonel of his own, volunteer regiment of “Fire Zouaves.”
Soon after the outbreak of war, he was shot in the back by an
Alexandria, Virginia, tavern keeper, for having cut down a Confederate
flag after a minor engagement there. He was just 24.
After
attending his funeral on May 25, 1861, Lincoln paid homage to
his young friend, writing to his parents, “In the untimely
loss of your noble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less
than your own. So much of promised usefulness to one’s country,
and of bright hopes for one’s self and friends, have rarely
been so suddenly dashed, as in his fall.”
The
tribute is characteristic of Lincoln—frank, unassuming,
considerate, and succinct—and brimming with real sorrow.
He does not presume too much knowledge of Ellsworth: “My
acquaintance with him began less than two years ago; yet…it
was as intimate as the disparity of our ages, and my engrossing
engagements, would permit.” He seeks above all to console
the Ellsworths, telling them that “I never heard him utter
a profane, or an intemperate word. What was conclusive of his
good heart, he never forgot his parents.” His closing says
all that can be said:
“In
the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your
sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory
of my young friend, and your brave and early fallen child. May
God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power.
Sincerely your friend in a common affliction---A. Lincoln.”
No
president could better honor the dead.
