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.
Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address
It’s a commonplace to observe that Lincoln was a great writer, but only because it’s true. I’m in DC for the weekend, and we visited the Lincoln Memorial; I hadn’t noticed before that the second inaugural and the Gettysburg Address were carved on the wall, and I bored my kids to death by insisting on reading them. They’re such short pieces, but they hit so hard, and never in my life so hard as now.
America has always been high on its own supply, and from its inception it’s had a lot to answer for. But it’s hard not to look at Lincoln and think there has to be some good in a country that would raise someone with his talents up from his circumstances and hand him the power to take itself to war against its own evil.
That’s all oversimplified. I’m not a historian. But it does get me thinking about the value of inspiration; of ideals that move people to action, even in the breach.
Also I did not know, although I should have guessed, that Lincoln was a matter of the withering burn:
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.
Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address