My Prayer of Gratitude to Those who Gave their Lives

Reading Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain”

By E.T. Hansen

Few peoples in this world are as willing to pay the price for their democracy, their freedom and their nation as Americans.

When we look back on the great wars America fought, we see first and foremost three: the War of Independence, the Civil War and the World War II. Each of these wars led to a better nation and to a better world in general.

But we also paid a high price in human lives for those accomplishments.

The biggest price we paid was in the Civil War, which cost more American souls than any other war before or since — over half a million.

The Civil War is now known for the great achievement of abolishing slavery, but that wasn’t the reason it began — the primary goal was to keep the union together. When the South seceded, Abraham Lincoln made the hard and drastic decision to go to war to keep the nation from dissolving into two smaller states.

He didn’t have to go to war. He could have accepted it — the North was richer than the South, it would have gotten by very well as half a nation. And we have to ask ourselves: Was the unity of America worth the cost in lives? Over half a million Americans killed just to keep the country in one piece? Lincoln must have asked himself that question every night.

Looking back, I say: Yes, it was worth it.

America today is the most powerful, most prosperous, most free country in the world and the strongest defender of democracy, and we can only do that because we are big. Only as a large, unified federation (made up of fifty smaller states that bicker among themselves yet still display a unified front towards others), were we able to fight and defeat Fascism and Communism and are able today to support many smaller states that face aggressors.

We don’t like thinking about it, but a major reason we enjoy so many privileges is because so many Americans died to keep the union together. Our prosperity, our vibrant culture and our power was built upon sacrifice.

Are we grateful for that sacrifice? How often do we think of those who could not enjoy all of this, so we can?

When I think of the death of Lincoln, I think of that also as a kind of sacrifice.

Jesus Christ sealed his achievement on earth by willingly sacrificing himself — Lincoln didn’t die voluntarily, nor can he be compared to the son of God — yet I feel there was a kind of mythical, poetic necessity to it.

It was he who made the awful, painful decision to send hundreds of thousands of young Americans to death for the sake of the Union. Maybe, in a strange way, when the struggle was over, he had to seal that sacrifice by making the same sacrifice himself. Maybe only then was his act of saving the nation complete.

Sometimes greatness, and the terrible, excruciating decisions that come with it — and make no doubt, Lincoln had to make decisions no man or woman should ever be asked to make — sometimes that greatness demands a sacrifice from the man or woman making those decisions.

And from us it demands gratitude.

In our striving to get and be what we want, we forget how we got here. I believe it’s important for us to occasionally stop and say a silent prayer of gratitude to those who went before.

Here’s my prayer:

To those — in America and all around the world — who gave their lives to make the world a better place; to my ancestors who fought and fell in wars to protect democracy and freedom; to Abraham Lincoln and other great men and women who had the courage to make terrible, heart-breaking decisions for the greater good — I am grateful.

I am grateful to be living in the world you left behind; I am grateful for your sacrifice, for your determination, for your sense of right and wrong, and for your dedication to the good. I am grateful, and I hope I can live up to your legacy.

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