Interpreting Lincoln's Second Inaugural Sermon, Part 3

In the first installment of this series, we established that Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address is so clearly built on at least four Biblical texts--and, as we shall see, on Christian notions of repentance and renewal--that it is more sermon than policy statement.

In the second, we traced the evolution of Lincoln's religious beliefs through 1865.

Now, to the text and an analysis of it. This, I think, will yield some clues as to what Lincoln may have meant in referring to "those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him."

Here's the full text of the speech (I've numbered the paragraphs for easy reference):

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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"

4. 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.

We can, for now, dispense with discussion of paragraphs 1 and 2, which really serve to set the contextual stage for the main points Lincoln wants to make in the latter two paragraphs. But, in the last installment of the series, we'll come back to them, as an exploration of paragraphs 3 and 4 will help us to better understand what Lincoln says in the foresection of the speech.

Paragraph 3:
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.
1. In saying that the "colored slaves" comprise one-eighth of the US population, Lincoln is tacitly recognizing what many of his time would have been horrified to admit: that those African-Americans who made up the slave population were on an equal footing with whites. The Constitution, of course, hadn't recognized this fact, having ascribed to blacks and Indians the value of three-fifths of a person.

As anyone who has read the transcripts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 can attest, Lincoln's racial views weren't appreciably more enlightened than those of the Founders. In the early years of his presidency, he still tried to find a means by which African-Americans who had lived in this country for centuries could be sent "back to Africa" or perhaps, to South America.

But Lincoln underwent a conversion experience during his presidency. He came to view African-Americans as the equals of whites. Frederick Douglass said that no white man ever accorded him the sort of unself-conscious and easy-going magnanimity that Lincoln displayed whenever they conversed.

2. Lincoln's statement that slavery "somehow" was "the cause of the war" is remarkable. It's a strong intimation of what will follow. Lincoln will avoid ascribing blame for the Civil War to the South alone. The institution of slavery was a great evil "localized" in the South, of course. But from the beginning, the South practiced slavery and for the sake of unity, the North had countenanced it. Both were to blame for the evil institution and for the evil of the war which it "somehow" caused.

Implicit in Lincoln's recognition of Northern complicity with slavery, is a confession of his own personal complicity with it. Lincoln had never been among the Republican "radicals" or abolitionists. He had been willing to accept the continued existence of slavery in those states where it had existed already, even after the Civil War had begun.

Early in the conflict, he insisted that it was not about slavery, a political construction designed to maintain the loyalty of the border states, which had slavery but remained in the Union. (Nonetheless, Lincoln, with his rational bent of mind, no doubt believed that preserving the Union was a higher value than the disposition of slavery or the slaves.) But his "preserve the Union" stance proved less than inspiring to the North and, Lincoln seems to have ultimately concluded, not accurate. Slavery was the actual cause of the war, the whole nation and its president bore culpability for slavery lasting so long, and now, Lincoln concluded, God had decided that slavery must be ended.

3. Presidents don't generally like to indict their countries or themselves for mistakes or moral blindnesses. Yet these were extraordinary times and Lincoln was an extraordinary man. Lincoln seemed to understand that the post-Civil War era would present his generation with an opportunity analogous to that given the Revolutionary War-generation after their great war had ended: To consciously fashion the identity and organizing principles of a renewed America.

Consonant with the Biblical perspective though, Lincoln realized that new starts cannot be made without first dealing with the sins of the past. Confession is the road to healing. A psalm ascribed to the Old Testament King David says:

Blessed is he
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man
whose sin the LORD does not count against him
and in whose spirit is no deceit.

When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.

For day and night
your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer...

Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD "—
and you forgave
the guilt of my sin. [Psalm 32:1-5, The New International Version]

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.
1. This is the closest that Lincoln comes to ascribing more blame on the South than the North. Yet, from the rest of the speech, we see that implicit in the clause that says "while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it," was a self-indictment and one of the North. They had been guilty of moral laxness in failing to address the issue of slavery. They had been willing to allow the continued trafficking in human beings, if only the unity of the nation could be maintained.

Many in the North had been willing to accept the slave commerce. For example, textile factory owners and workers in New England suppressed any concerns they might have had about slavery because they needed the cotton the slaves cared for and picked.

It wasn't enough to restrict the spread of slavery, Lincoln was saying. The soul of the nation depended on the total abolition of slavery and the exorcism of all the putrid arguments that had been made to justify it, in both the North and the South. It was not possible to compromise with slavery if America was to become the America of its July 4 promise.

For a man like Lincoln, an exponent of American exceptionalism, America nationhood involved more than territorial sovereignty, economic well-being, or military might. In the Gettysburg Address, he had described the conscious beginning of America with those famous words, "Fourscore 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."

The United States had not evolved by virtue of language and culture or by the conquests of competing powers. The Founders had decided to birth the United States of America. They had covenanted with each other in the way a man and a woman covenant in marriage and from their union, a new nation was born. That nation had a mission, Lincoln had said: the fostering of freedom for all its citizens in a national community in which all citizens had equal standing.

In the New Testament book of Galatians, the apostle Paul writes that within the Christian community, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) As a voracious reader of Scripture, Lincoln was no doubt influenced by such constructions. What he understood is that in the eyes of the Creator acknowledged by the Declaration of Independence, all were equal.

The end of slavery was, for Lincoln by the occasion of his second Inaugural, a necessity if America were to maintain its unique status among the family of nations, if it were to fulfill the promise made at its birth, and if it were to save its national soul.

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.
1. Here, Lincoln again does something else we seldom see in political leaders. He admits that he and the rest of the country, in both regions, had had no idea how protracted the Civil War would be.

He also admits that he, in 1861, had not anticipated that before the conflict ended, he would sign the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the conquered southern states and clearing the way for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery, before the end of 1865, nine months after the Inauguration, eight after Lincoln was cut down.

One element of confession featured prominently in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and taken from the Bible, is the idea that some evil has overtaken the confessor and is so large he or she cannot handle it by themselves. The first step in confession is the honest admission of our helplessness before an evil that has leeched onto and taken control of our lives. Lincoln effectively makes such a confession about slavery in this speech.

It's commonplace to say that in this speech, Lincoln plays the role of an Old Testament prophet, calling the nation to repentance. There's truth to that. But he is just as much playing the role of priest, a function which the New Testament insists, every believer in Christ plays. A priest, according to the Bible, is one who represents the people before God and God before the people. Lincoln courageously plays that dangerous role here.

Gandhi once said, "They say I am a saint trying to be a politician, but I am only a politician trying to be a saint."Perhaps Lincoln, who had always resisted surrender to the God attested to in the Bible, might have said the same thing, considering that the Biblical understanding of a saint is simply one who believes in the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

2. The war had turned out to be "fundamental" and "astounding." From the death and destruction of the Civil War, Lincoln and the nation had learned that we're not always as clever or competent as we think. For a self-made man like Lincoln who believed in rationality, the war was a stunning lesson in the limits of human ingenuity.

Once the war began, he was certain that it must be executed until victory was achieved. But, for a man of Lincoln's sensibilities and sensitivity, every wounded or dead soldier, every widow or orphan resulting from the war, was a repudiation of human hubris and of all human pretense of being in ultimate control.

[More analysis in the next installment of this series.]