Rethink.

Com­men­tary below the speech, that makes sense of the speech paragraph-by-paragraph. My apolo­gies for the for­mat of this post; I hope you will read it in its entirety, and if you have sug­ges­tions about how it ought to look, do tell.

Sec­ond Inau­gural Address
Abra­ham Lincoln

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 inaugeral [sic] 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 dis­sole [sic] 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 last­ing peace, among our­selves, and with all nations.

Com­men­tary:

The themes of the Get­tys­burg Address con­cerned equal­ity, and how it should be con­ceived in order to defend liberty.

The ques­tions of Sec­ond Inau­gural con­cern Prov­i­dence and its rela­tion to Jus­tice. How can a war-torn nation be repaired, when one side, clearly in the wrong, is now also to be humil­i­ated militarily?

A dig­nity is needed for cit­i­zens to be cit­i­zens. But right and wrong are absolutes, and do not allow us to assign dig­nity so eas­ily. God’s time is above our time, and calls us to some­thing higher than our present con­cep­tions, no? It would be for the South’s own good that they were treated like trai­tors and slavers, and that might be what a tran­scen­dent notion of jus­tice demands. To show “mercy” would be to cave into the sen­ti­ments that almost pre­vailed before the war, and thus to treat the war as an aber­ra­tion that did not actu­ally hap­pen. The par­tic­u­lars of actions and times can be used in con­junc­tion with what is per­ceived as tran­scen­dent to ignore the present duty.

For some strange rea­son, Lin­coln asks his audi­ence for char­ity, right then and there. How he gets to that point is the great­ness of this speech.

The First Two Paragraphs

Lin­coln begins with a shock­ing state­ment — we do not need plans, I do not need to tell you news. In this age where Pres­i­dents have to make news to be on the news, we must won­der what he feels his rhetor­i­cal task is. “The progress of our arms…is as well known to the pub­lic and to myself” gives a clue — he pro­claims him­self equal to the pub­lic in a mat­ter he has been charged with; he is appeal­ing as an equal to them at least as much as an Executive.

The equal­ity of knowl­edge — upon which hopes are based — then segues into an equal­ity of past hopes: All of us did not wish war. How­ever, the knowl­edge that past hopes were based on involves a bit of skewed his­tory. The insur­gent agents that wished to “divide effects” ulti­mately fired on Ft. Sumter. The way Lin­coln makes it sound, there was a legit­i­mate pol­icy debate going on in Wash­ing­ton then.

Lin­coln is not lying — he wants us to focus on the gen­eral prob­lem of a democ­racy, that of minority/majority diver­gence. Every democ­racy is legim­i­tate because the major­ity can make their voice heard and cre­ate law and pol­icy. How­ever, democ­ra­cies didn’t just come about to slav­ishly serve the many. They came about because actors in other regimes were deprived of their rights, and what they had a right to. Every democ­racy is defined by this ten­sion: the right of the major­ity ver­sus the rights of minori­ties. The ques­tion of “what is most just” is merely one degree away.

The Third Paragraph

So Lin­coln moves to the ques­tion of yet another minor­ity, that of the Slaves the South had. He men­tions that they were “some­how” the cause of the war, as if to say “no one really under­stand exactly how the slaves mat­tered,” as if to say that Amer­ica really does not under­stand the deep prob­lems regard­ing democ­racy and equal­ity. The North cer­tainly did not know the deeper ideas behind both con­cepts when it said it could only restrict the ter­ri­to­r­ial enlarge­ment of slav­ery, at most. It gave a free hand through its pas­siv­ity to the South to try and make slav­ery an accept­able thing for all.

The point, then, of slav­ery not being under­stood prop­erly as the cause of the war shows us that both North and South were engaged in a fun­da­men­tal injus­tice. To oppose some­thing wrong for the wrong rea­sons is not a good thing, and some­thing that encour­aged the South to be more bel­li­cose than it should have ever allowed to be.

Since both North and South do not know what jus­tice is, it makes per­fect sense both sides would not expect any­thing that actu­ally hap­pened in the war. If they can­not under­stand what is uni­ver­sal, how could they under­stand what is par­tic­u­lar? Igno­rant of causal­ity, they move to prayer, as if God will change the cos­mic order for their shortsightedness.

At this point in the speech, Lin­coln unleashes what I call the two great coun­ter­fac­tu­als. Lin­coln is not say­ing “God con­sid­ers slav­ery a wrong that He wishes to remove, and this will cost us all much blood.” He is say­ing maybe God thinks that way. And yet, he is giv­ing ground for belief in Him. Sup­pose the worst about God, that He uses us to destroy each other to rid the world of evil. Is one going to say this is unjust? The pred­i­cates one uses to describe God could have been used long ago to rid us of those evils we may be pay­ing for now. The North was deca­dent before the war, and allowed the ten­sion that defined democ­racy to get out of hand. It did not take its own right seri­ously. This does not mean the abo­li­tion­ists were of a true opin­ion in burn­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, for they neglected the teach­ing which Lin­coln will con­clude with, and were deca­dent in their own way.

Con­clu­sion

Lin­coln moves us from the “judge­ments of the Lord” to another Bib­li­cal teach­ing which has been neglected, that of char­ity and fra­ter­nity. We trust in God not for the sake of know­ing the par­tic­u­lar, but know­ing that which is most impor­tant, which we could always see if we wished. The most mag­nif­i­cent words in Amer­i­can his­tory describe any sol­dier, North and South, any widow, any orphan, and the first men­tion of jus­tice in this speech is also the last: jus­tice does not take peace for granted at any time, as the con­stant con­ced­ing to the South did, but aims for a peace that is lasting.

• Ques­tions regard­ing the Lin­coln Memorial
• Between Reli­gion and Rea­son: Equal­ity In Jefferson’s First Inau­gural Address
• Abra­ham Lin­coln, “Procla­ma­tion of Thanksgiving”
• Abra­ham Lin­coln, “Let­ter to Ephraim D. and Phoebe Ellsworth”
• Abra­ham Lin­coln, “Remarks to Bal­ti­more Pres­by­ter­ian Synod, Wash­ing­ton, D.C.”

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