In the famed 1838 Lyceum Address at the beginning of his political career, Abraham Lincoln warned of the greatest threat facing America. The then-Illinois state representative declared:
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.
Though the United States was, at that time, a young and unpopulated nation in comparison to such imperial powers as Great Britain, France, and Spain, the geographic size of the nation, its distance from the European and Asian continents, and its ability to repel British forces during the War of 1812, seemed to prove the unassailable character of the American republic.
Almost two-hundred years removed from that speech, is it still true? Are we still a nation of “freemen” who “must live through all time or die by suicide?” Or are we now more at risk of destruction from some external foe? A new historical study by esteemed historian Victor Davis Hanson, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation, warns that what can seem unimaginable can, given the (wrong) circumstances, become inevitable.
Case Studies in Great Civilizations Collapsing
Hanson, a senior fellow in military history and classics
