Victor Davis Hanson says Trump must evoke Abraham Lincoln's July 4 address in 1861 amid current unrest

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Victor Davis Hanson says President Trump can unify the nation through restoration

Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson joins Raymond Arroyo with insight on 'The Ingraham Angle.'

Hoover Institution senior fellow and author Victor Davis Hanson told the "Ingraham Angle" Friday that President Trump must respond to America's current unrest with a firm statement along the lines of Abraham Lincoln's message to Congress on July 4, 1861.

"In 1861, Lincoln gave a Fourth of July address to Congress, and it [the situation in America] was divisive, much more divisive than it is now," Hanson explained. "He wanted unity but it's very hard to have unity when a small proportion of the states don't want unity. So what Lincoln did was he said, basically, 'I have bent over backwards, I'm going to protect federal property.'

"'I don't want you to do what you're doing,' [Lincoln said] when he addressed the people who were against unity in the Union, but he reassured the others that he was going to be firm."

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In his remarks, Lincoln defended his actions in response to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, S.C., including calling up the militia and suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and requested additional funds and troops to put down the rebellion.

"I think Donald Trump has got to say, 'We have 244 links in this chain [of] years. Our generation is not going to be the first one to break it, I'm sorry,'" Hanson said.

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"'People died in Okinawa. They died at Gettysburg. They died at Shiloh. We have an obligation to them to carry on that spirit, and I'm not going to preside over the first generation that says we are going to tear down statues ... we are going to cancel people's lives out with McCarthyite tactics,'" Hanson said, describing a passage Trump should or could say.

"We have blue state mayors and governors who deliberately do not enforce the law. We have corporate CEOs, we have retired generals, we have university presidents, who know better but either out of weakness or timidity or fear, they are allowing people to change our customs, our traditions, our icons, and our reverence. And somebody has to say, 'We are not going to do that. We don't want to offend you, we don't want to go to war with you, but we are not going to let you, a minority, dictate to a majority that is trying to keep a wonderful nation.'"