Binding the Wounds of War, by Ken Craycraft

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Victory in Europe and Japan occurred within months of the 80th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Had he not been assassinated, Abraham Lincoln would have been 65 years old when Winston Churchill was born in 1874, the same age as Churchill when he became prime minister of the UK in May 1940. These affinities are less important than the roles of these men in the wars that they fought.

Lincoln’s presidency and Churchill’s first stint as prime minister were entirely occupied with war. The Civil War began a few weeks after Lincoln took office, but the threat of secession and war had been made by some southern states as early as the presidential campaign. Lincoln’s assassination came only six days after the rebel states formally surrendered, but before all hostilities had ceased. …

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