On Presidents’ Day we might do well to remember the inspiring words of one of our most important leaders. He presided over the country during the Civil War of the 1860s: Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln. In a letter to a Kentuckian in 1855, Lincoln, then a leading politician in the Illinois legislature, put the crisis of the Republic in these memorable words:
You are not a friend to slavery in the abstract. In that speech you spoke of “the peaceful extinction of slavery,” and used other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was at some time to have an end. Since then we have had thirtysix years of experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. … On the question of liberty as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that “all men are created equal” a self-evident truth, but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim “a self-evident lie”. … Our political problem now is, “Can we as a nation continue together permanently—forever–half slave and half free?” The problem is too mighty for me–may God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.
After his election to the presidency for the first term in 1861, he pleaded with his countrymen to preserve the Union and to deal with problems peaceably:
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellowcountrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.” … Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The North and the South engaged in a bloody Civil War over whether or not the Union could survive half slave and half free. In 1863, President Lincoln dedicated the Gettysburg national Cemetery with words that have been ranked with those of Pericles of old:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate– we cannot consecrate–we cannot hallow–this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; that the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
The North elected Lincoln to a second term of office in 1865. At his second inaugural, he interpreted the nation’s conflict in terms of Scripture’s words:
… Fondly do we hope–fervently do we pray–that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with a sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
While Abraham Lincoln’s words may be familiar to readers of the OUTLOOK, they are worth remembering as we begin a new stage in our nation’s life as the world’s foremost superpower. We should teach them to our children and our children’s children, and perhaps find a place for them in our pulpits and Christian education programs.
JAMES H. SMYLIE is professor emeritus of church history at Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia.
See: The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Philip Van Doren, Stern, N.Y.: Modern Library: 1949; William Lee Miller, Lincoln’s Virtues, Knopf: 2002
