Sacred Efforts Needed

 

“—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

 

These are the final words of President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address; the full address is at the end of this posting. While longer than the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in not long; it can be read in less than five minutes. Yet, an overwhelming number of Americans have never heard of it, even though it is engraved on the wall of his memorial in Washington, D.C.

 

In a lecture series I attended while in my first year of school at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, this speech by Lincoln was called, “An almost sacred text.” And I think Lincoln’s words live up to this title because what he told the nation was something that no president, before or after, has ever articulated with such clarity.

 

It may seem strange that I would share this reflection as we approach the Fourth of July. It may be more fitting to read the Declaration of Independence. But something else happened on these opening days of July that are often overlooked in our barbeque celebrations: the Battle of Gettysburg, which occurred from July 1^st to July 3^rd, 1863. And for those not familiar with the particulars with this battle, it needs to be noted that the Union (U.S.A.) forces had been beaten time and again in the first two years of the war. If the Confederacy had managed to break the Union lines at Gettysburg, it was extremely likely that the Confederacy would have marched on Washington and won the war. In fact, it was only due to a rare tactical mistake and poor information about Union positions, that Lee’s Confederate forces were turned away. And it was after Gettysburg that the Union started having meaningful military victories.

 

Fast forward to March 4, 1865. President Lincoln had been reelected to a second term. General Lee had finally surrendered his army, although there were still other Confederate armies in the field. But the Confederate capital of Richmond had fallen, and it appeared that the end of the most devastating war in American history, before or since, was in sight.

 

The people and politicians around Washington wanted to celebrate and they wanted to make the South pay. They were expecting a patriotic victory speech elevating the goodness of the United States and the rightness of its cause. They wanted to be told that they were a special and blessed people who had done God’s work.

 

This was not the speech that they heard. Lincoln’s speech reflected the deep discernment in which he engaged during his first term in office. You can see his growth from what he said and did before he was elected and the plainly spoken words of law and grace in this speech.  

Lincoln was by no means a perfect man. Abolitionists such as former slave and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass were constantly frustrated that he did not promote change faster. Lincoln’s record concerning the rights of indigenousness peoples is not good, although it should be noted that while the settlers who created the intolerable circumstances that led to the Dakota Sioux uprising were calling for blood, Lincoln pardoned 264 of the leaders of the uprising. He still allowed for the execution of 38 people who were only doing what racism and desperation led them to do. Lincoln battled depression and grief while in office, especially after his son Wille died, and he had a rough relationship with his wife Mary Todd. Lincoln was not perfect.

 

But Lincoln did have a strong drive to do what was right and what he thought God wanted. And in the Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln revealed to the nation what he had struggled with himself: that God was not on the side of the South or the North but was always on the side of African slaves and the widows and orphans who had been killed during the war. He gave the sobering news that the war would continue until God said enough was enough. And like a Biblical prophet of old, Lincoln shared with the people that God’s judgment would prevail, even if the Almighty still wanted an eye for an eye for the two and half centuries of abomination that was American slavery.

 

You see, while I do believe that God has moved in the affairs of the United States throughout history, it has not been to promote unchecked nationalism that never wants to hear hard things or that we need to change. I do believe that God had a part when Thomas Jefferson wrote, “…that all men are created equal.” How else could a slave holding man, write such words that were in direct conflict with his circumstances and desires. I do believe that ever since those words were penned, that God has blessed us, not with a special status above all other peoples, but with the freedom to truly grow and live into those words that Jefferson wrote.

 

And as I read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address this Fourth of July, it is a reminder of how close we came to throwing it all away because we turned a blind eye to growing and fulfilling these words of equality and justice for others, and that it came to one ill-fated charge at Gettysburg to save us from ourselves.

 

President Lincoln also touched on a topic that is still sensitive in our day. He said, “With charity for all.” Perhaps we can hear the “All lives matter” chants. But in his speech, Lincoln also laid out clearly how “all” did not include, for many, African Americans. That it needed to be clearly understood that “all” also included “black lives,” too.

 

And the challenge that Lincoln’s words give us is to keep expanding the meaning of that world “all,” just as “men” in “all men are created equal” is later expanded to include women, and even eventually indigenous peoples.

 

But I know the response of some: “That is all in the past and its time to get over it.” The reality is, however, that we may want to ignore the legacy that has been left to us, but the work of binding the wounds of the nation and its people is not in any way done. I know we want it to be. I remember growing up in the 1980s and being told issues of race no longer existed. It was not true. And in my experiences during seven years of law enforcement, it became painfully clear that the judicial system still has not gotten over it. And my subsequent 20 years in ordained ministry reveals that sometimes we do not even want to try.

 

The fact is that when we say it is all in the past, we ignore the fact that some are still affected by that past every day. But the response is often to engage in a cancel culture of the fullness of our history. We want to forget about the 1921 Black Wall Street Race Massacre. We want to forget the redlining of neighborhoods, or lynching, or children having to go to school under armed escort – all things that have occurred in the lifetimes of many of us. We have not yet “bound the nation’s wounds” as Lincoln instructed us in his Second Inaugural Address.

 

It should be noted that in the picture of Lincoln giving his address, his assassin John Wilkes Booth was on the balcony above Lincoln as was one of the other conspirators standing just below Lincoln’s podium. Also listening to Lincoln’s address was Frederick Douglass. In fact, Lincoln went directly to Douglass after his speech concluded because he wanted to know what one of his biggest critics thought. Frederick Douglass told Abraham Lincoln, “It was a sacred effort.”

 

So, I will re-read President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address on the fourth so that I may recommit myself to the work that Lincoln asked us to do and that still need to be done. May the work we are all called to do continue to be a sacred effort in our age.  

March 4, 1865

 

Fellow Countrymen:

 

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

 

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 

 

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. 

 

The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? 

 

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 bond-man’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 the 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 a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.