“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong”

I recently finished Carl Sandburg’s three volume biography of Abraham Lincoln covering his hardscrabble days as a boy growing up on the Illinois Prairie, his early days working as a surveyor and postmaster (teaching himself to become a lawyer despite having no formal education), his ethical dealings with his law clients earning him the nickname ‘Honest Abe’, his election to the House of Representatives, his unlikely ascension to the Presidency and his steady leadership during the great struggle to save the United States from breaking apart.

He seemed a man perfectly formed for the times and the difficult task that was thrust upon him. It is hard to imagine any other leader with the combined qualities that Lincoln possessed who could have led us through this country’s most perilous Constitutional crisis. Fate somehow delivered to this country the leader it most needed at its darkest hour.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the best selling book of the times, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin“, met with  Lincoln three years into the Civil War and captured the essence of his leadership qualities in an article for the magazine ‘Watchman and Reflector‘:

The world has seen and wondered at the greatest site and marvel of our day, to-wit, a plain working man of the people, with no more culture, instruction or education than any workingman may obtain for himself, called on to conduct the passage of a great people through a crisis involving the destinies of the whole world…

Lincoln’s strength is of a peculiar kind; it is not aggressive so much as passive, and among passive things it is like the strength not so much as a stone buttress, as of a wire cable. It is strength swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and that to popular needs, yet tenaciously and inflexibly bound to carry its great end; and probably by no other kind of strength could our national ship have been drawn safely thus far during the tossings and tempests which beset her way.

Surrounded by all sorts of conflicting claims, by traitors, by half-hearted timid men, by Border State men and free State men, by radical Abolitionists and Conservatives, he has listened to all, weighed the words of all, waited, observed, yielded now here and now there, but in the main kept one inflexible, honest purpose, and drawn the national ship through.

Lincoln was a gentle and compassionate soul and many people who knew him remarked how the great suffering caused by the war produced in him a deep melancholy. An incomprehensible 620,000 men were killed and 476,000 were wounded during the fighting. One out of every four soldiers who went to war never returned.

The carnage weighed heavily on Lincoln, yet he never wavered in his belief that, regardless of the price,  it was his duty to defend the Constitution against the rebel States and to prevent the further spread of the evil of slavery. Lincoln expressed this resoluteness in his 2nd Inaugural Address:

“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 bondsman’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.”

It is refreshing to read about a President who was humble and wise, who invited criticism, who refused to demonize his opponents, who practiced prudence in all his public correspondence, who sought out the most qualified people to advise him and who always did what he felt was right for the country regardless of the political consequences.

Sandburg relates many stories that reveal the nature of Lincoln. Here are but a few:

• When Lincoln was choosing his Cabinet, he picked several members who were political rivals that had openly campaigned against him. Lincoln valued their opinions and when his supporters protested their appointment, Lincoln remarked: “It is much better not to be led from the region of reason into that of hot blood by imputing to public men motives which they do not avow“.
• When a young soldier was sentenced to death for falling asleep while on duty, Lincoln could not find a soul who was willing to speak up for the soldier and ask for clemency. Lincoln wrote back to the troop commander with a pardon for the soldier “If he has no friend, I’ll be his friend“.
• When visiting the front lines of the battlefields, Lincoln would often visit the hospital tents of the sick and wounded – including the tents of  captured rebel soldiers. One wounded Confederate Colonel remarked that he was a man who had spent the last two years fighting with all his strength against Lincoln and the Union. Lincoln responded to him, “I hope a Confederate colonel will not refuse me his hand“.
• When the Confederate capitol of Richmond fell, Lincoln decided to visit the city. As he was getting off the boat, the receiving crowd consisted mostly of former slaves, one old black man fell to his knees and greeted Lincoln as a Messiah. Lincoln said to him, “Don’t kneel to me. You must kneel to God only and thank him for your freedom“.
• While returning on the boat from Richmond, the Navy band was playing patriotic songs when Lincoln suddenly requested the band to play Dixie, remarking that the southern battle tune was now Federal property and he wished it to become a goodwill song of the re-united states.

It seems fitting that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday, a symbol of atonement for the sins of his country and as Lincoln wrote presciently to a mother grieving the loss of her sons – another “costly sacrifice laid upon the altar of freedom“..

Lincoln did not live to see the reuniting of the country or the reconstruction of the war torn South, but his guiding principle for the healing of the nation were succinctly expressed during his 2nd Inaugural Address for those who were left to finish the work.

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.

May we as a country take Lincoln’s wish to heart and strive as a nation to live up to his lofty ideals so that “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.“