I have been teaching Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural the address for years, both in my U.S. History Survey class and my Civil War class. I even developed a sermon on the address which I sometimes use in churches or when I am asked to speak in college chapels. A few years ago I delivered that sermon in the chapel at Messiah College.
When I teach this document I often focus on Lincoln’s call for national unity. While many Northern ministers and theologians wanted to punish the South for seceding from the Union, Lincoln recommended caution. “The Almighty has his own purposes,” he said. He warned both northern Christian leaders and his fellow Republicans to be careful about invoking God’s wrath against the South. Lincoln encouraged the North to “judge not, that we be not judged.” He recommended “malice toward none” and “charity for all.” Lincoln urged the country to “bind up the nation’s wounds” in order to achieve a “lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
I have always taught the Second Inaugural Address as an anecdote to the culture wars. I still teach it this way.
But when I re-read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address this morning, in the context of our current national moment, I was struck by the fact that Lincoln’s plea for civility, healing, and unity comes after the Civil War. Lincoln is calling Americans to rally around a particular kind of nation–a nation in which slavery will be no more, a nation purged of its immorality (at least on this issue), and a nation secured by the Union victory in the war.
Lincoln clearly blames the Civil War on the South. He reminds us that “insurgent agents” were seeking to “destroy” and “dissolve” the Union. The South preferred to “make war” rather than “let the nation survive.” The Confederacy wanted to extend slavery, even if it meant it would “rend the Union.” Both sides read the same Bible and prayed to the same God, but “the prayers of both could not be answered.”
Slavery, Lincoln came to believe, was a cancer on the nation. It needed to be removed. As the war went on, Lincoln was far from civil in his approach to dealing with this national sin. Lincoln did not appeal to the mystery of God’s will when he ordered his generals to kill Lee’s army. (Only U.S. Grant seemed to get the message). As he listened to the sound of the abolitionists in his ear, Lincoln’s envisioned a new birth of American freedom. This vision for national unity would take place on his terms. There was no moral equivalency. The North was right. The South was wrong. The North would win the war. The South would lose. The South’s immoral vision of American life had been defeated. Now, and only now, was the time to think about how moral and theological questions about judgement, malice, and charity might be applied and practiced in our national life.
As we think about Lincoln’s famous address in our current moment, perhaps it teaches us that civility has its limits. War, of course, is never the answer, but it is also hard to reconcile with immorality.
What do you think?
ADDENDUM (January 29, 2020 at 12:30pm):
Historian Wendy Wong Schirmer offers this very thoughtful response:
A quick search for the word “civility” reveals that it comes from civis– citizen– which is also related to civilis and civitas, namely pertaining to the city and public life. We tend to take “civility” to mean politeness. Affability. But it would seem to me that civility, given its etymology, has another dimension and a specific purpose, one that can’t be detached from citizenship duties, and the well being of the city (and I mean “city” more in classical terms here– usually the city state).
I’m contemplating these things at the moment because I am teaching both Plato’s Republic and Frederick Douglass’s exhortation to remember the Civil War in two different courses this semester. I thoroughly own that a lot of these thoughts have yet to crystallize into something clearer, and so I apologize for any muddle-headedness and banality that results. The other day, it stuck me while reading the Republic that Plato discusses not only how governments– and individuals– corrupt and disintegrate, but if I remember off the top of my head, Socrates makes a passing comment about a city ceasing to be a city. For the purpose of our discussion, it would mean the point where civility will have truly broken down. It certainly did during the Civil War. For somebody like Plato, civility isn’t reconcilable with immorality; the entire city would ultimately break down. This is not to say that we should use the classics as some excuse for legal draconianism, but there’s something to be said for that observation. It at least provides food for thought. For what it’s worth, Plato writes in the aftermath of the fall of Athenian democracy and the death of his mentor Socrates.
It therefore doesn’t surprise me that Lincoln is far from “civil” (at least if we’re thinking about civility as being polite) on slavery. And Douglass too. Their arguments suggest that the South was uncivil first by rending the nation for the sake of preserving slavery. You also can’t rebuild the nation and bind up its wounds– and therefore the “city,” citizenship, and civility– while appealing to moral equivalency on this issue. I notice that so many people like to use Douglass to talk about “malice toward none,” but seem to miss his emphasis on liberty and justice. That happened the last time I posted a letter from Douglass to his former master written before the Civil War– a letter that not only contained the words “I am your fellow man and not your slave,” but a whole discussion of natural rights and where they come from, as well as a call to conversion aimed at the entire country. To heal in the aftermath of the Civil War doesn’t simply require prudence and generosity. It requires justice and truth also.