Today’s blogpost comes right between two holidays: yesterday was Lincoln’s birthday and tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I was trying to decide which day to focus on when it occurred to me that the two holidays actually work so perfectly together!
One of the saddest things I have witnessed during the past few years, and has been exacerbated by the pandemic, has been a growing animosity between people. Those who once were friends often barely speak to each anymore and families are torn apart in this hyperpoliticized and polarized environment. It breaks my heart. A lot of pundits speak in dire tones about how these are unprecedented times, but I actually disagree. There was another historical period that was even more fraught, from which we can draw a lot of valuable lessons.
The years before the U.S. Civil War were filled with heightened emotions. It actually began in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when a pragmatic, yet repugnant decision was made to formally form a union by implementing the infamous 3/5 clause – stating that for the sake of representation in Congress slaves would be counted as 3/5’s of a person. That unconscionable fight to maintain the United States’ “peculiar institution” of slavery was not finished there. There was the Missouri Compromise in 1820, dividing the nation into free and slave. There was a fight in Congress in 1830 where Daniel Webster fought for union instead of abolition and gave his famous, “liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable” speech (ironically the definition of liberty didn’t include everyone). There was the 1850 Compromise and the Kansas Nebraska Act. In 1856 a pro-slavery senator beat an abolitionist senator – in the U.S. Senate chamber – with his cane, nearly killing him. There was the John Brown raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. It’s fair to say that tensions were high throughout the country and the divide between factions was growing ever wider and wider with every passing month.
Enter Abraham Lincoln. He was elected in November of 1860, inaugurated in March 1861, and Civil War broke out a month later. In the following four years around 700,000 people died in the conflict. More were permanently injured. The scar across the nation was deep and long.
Abraham Lincoln won reelection in 1864. March 4, 1865 was his second inaugural. Unlike his first inauguration he didn’t need to sneak into town by stealth in order to evade assassins – he was already there and already fighting for not only his survival, but the nation’s. A man of great feeling, Lincoln hated the War, hated the cause, and hated the eventual long-term suffering he foresaw as the nation sought to heal.
In the beautiful Second inaugural Address Lincoln did not shy away from expounding on the cause of the war and the condemnation for a nation that had chosen to “wring the bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” He acknowledged the right of God to prolong the conflict “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.” Despite recognizing the evil that had produced the war, however, Lincoln, in the waning days of that war, still reached out with love instead of vengeance. In one of the most beautiful passages in all political speech he concluded his comments by saying, “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.”
What heartfelt words of compassion and love!
Unfortunately for the nation, Lincoln’s plea went unheeded. He was killed by an assassins bullet just 41 days later. Reconstruction was a time of punitive action, on all sides. Though a bit of a bandaid was placed over the national wound by the passage of the 13th and 14th amendments, by not treating it the underlying wound festered. Civil Rights legislation was enacted, but love cannot be legislated and bigotry and hate has continued to flourish.
This festering wound has allowed a divide on virtually all fronts. I’m not going to discuss specific political issues, for we have all witnessed them. I am going to state unequivocally, however, that the only cure for our national breach is to return to Lincoln’s plea for love. Love towards our fellow travelers here on earth will eliminate the strife that is filling our public square. Hence the segue to Valentine’s Day.
Love for others takes many forms. Corrie TenBoom spent years in a concentration camp because her Christian family loved others enough to hide Jews from their Nazi tormentors. Others have shown love by sacrificing their time to stand up and fight for full equality for all. Others work with the homeless or those in overlooked and struggling demographics There are fighters for human rights wherever the need is globally. People show love by baking cookies or giving respite to an overwhelmed parent or taking in a loaf of bread. Still others provide the listening ear and kindly smile. There is no limit on the ways love can be shown.
The truth is that life is short. Fear and grudges, having malice towards some, and refusing to open our hearts to love is a waste of precious moments in mortality. I’ve often laughed about the awkwardness of some of my family’s reunions on the other side: Grandpa William (the Conquerer) will have to meet up with my Uncle Edward – the Saxon heir to the English throne; Grandpa Robert (the Bruce) will share a family tree with Grandpa Edward (the 1st); A handful of the barons on the field at Runnymede will have to accept that Grandpa John is also part of the family; and Uncle MacBeth will once more face my Grandpa Duncan – the man he killed. These are the seemingly big examples. But the truth is, when life is over we will come face-to-face with those against whom we have borne grudges or have shunned. That time isn’t actually that far away, either.
Christ told us to “love one another.” The Apostle John reminded us that “God is love.” We are to be as Christ is and we are to absolutely unfailingly love. We don’t have to agree with people, we just have to love.
So back to Abraham Lincoln. At Gettysburg in 1863, still in the middle of the war, he called on Americans to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” They saved the union once – many of them out of love for their fellowman. It is up to us whether we save the nation now from the corrosive hatred and antagonism that is reaching every corner of the land. Will we love or will we hate? Will we have malice towards some, or malice towards none. We have an opportunity by our hearts and deeds to change the world. Are we up to it?
Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Lincoln.
Look to God and Live... Joyfully! 