More than One Stubborn Log in the Field

Okay, so this is from a different era. Still, I think it applies!

1863 was a troublesome year for Abraham Lincoln.  His Emancipation Proclamation went into effect January 1^st, but it needed to be vindicated by victories on the battlefield.  However, Grant?s prolonged siege of Vicksburg and the game-changing victory at Gettysburg wouldn?t see completion until early July.

Those victories were inconceivable mid-1863, especially after costly Union losses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville the previous winter and spring. Lincoln had another problem on his hands, too:  political trouble in Missouri, brewing since the start of the war and coming to a head in the summer of 1863.  The Border State had a large population of slave owners and had been occupied by a heavy Union military presence since early in the war.  The various Unionist factions that arose in the state continued to press Lincoln to support their respective camps, either in spreading immediate emancipation to Missouri or allowing slavery to exist with a more gradual emancipation plan.  When a delegation of the more radical faction visited Lincoln in Autumn to appeal for his support, he refused to add presidential clout to either group.

Frustrated with the politicking in Missouri, but unwilling to join sides, Lincoln remarked to a reporter that he had ?adopted the plan learned when a farmer boy engaged in plowing.  When he came across stumps too deep and too tough to be torn up, and too wet to burn, he plowed round them.?  In other words, he opted for the course of least resistance rather than directly dealing with the most difficult of situations?and possibly unwinnable ones? as in Missouri.[1]

Wait?he said that about Missourians?

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