Today is the 150th anniversary of the last battle of the Civil War, fought in and around my adopted hometown of Columbus, Georgia, one day after the assassination of Lincoln—and, ironically, on Easter Sunday.
When I think of the bitterness of today's politics, much of it rooted in religion, I wish for the magnanimity of Lincoln's second inaugural address, which he delivered five weeks before he was killed. The closing:
“Both [North and South] 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 offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses 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 offense 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 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.’
“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.”
Lincoln grew up in a Christian household, knew the Bible deeply, and as an adult attended Christian worship with his family. But he never joined a church, nor is there any record of him ever making a formal affirmation of Christian belief. This ambiguity seems to me to stem from Lincoln's fundamental humility. It seems a recognition that if there is a God, then God's nature and will are far beyond the ability of humans to know with certainty. But Lincoln could recognize suffering and grace, cruelty and decency, that were in front of his nose. Of those he could be certain. On those he could act, and on those he could require others to act.
The things that divide America today, grave as they are, are peanuts compared to the things that divided America 150 years ago. Our inability today to put aside our malice, to muster up some charity for those we consider our adversaries, to care for the battle-worn and widows and orphans, and to work for just and lasting peace, is a disgrace upon our generation. May God forgive us; may God grant the Lincolns among us a wider hearing; may God grant us more of Lincoln's humility; may God lead us to bind up our nation’s wounds.
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