the American people, a punishment by God for their past errors and an opportunity given them by God to re-create their lifein a nobler pattern. In his daily work Lincoln could be very hard-headed, stern and even relentless. But he had a vision, and little by little he strove to lift the people to it.
Hence the noble eloquence of his greatest utterances, and hence their semi-religious tone. The Gettysburg address has two keynotes. One is the oft-repeated phrase concerning government of the people, by the people, for the people, and the necessity of maintaining it as an object-lesson to humanity, an idea that can be traced back to the Peoria speech of 1854, where he said that he hated the popular indifference to slavery-extension “because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.” The other keynote is his expressed hope “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom” worthy of the sacrifice made by the heroic dead. It is this second keynote, the religious and prophetic chord, which should vibrate most strongly to later generations. That chord is touched in a different way in the letter to Mrs. Bixby. It sounds again in the noble letter that Lincoln sent to J. C. Conkling after the battle-summer of 1863, a letter that at times comes as close to poetry as prose well can. “The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it.” So he begins. He goes on to thank New England, and the sunny South too, “in more colors than one.” They had helped to win the late victories. “Nor must Uncle Sam’s web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp.…” And finally the splendid ending: “Thanks to all: for the great republic—for the principle it lives by and keeps alive—for man’s vast future—thanks to all.”
And finally, as in some ways the finest utterance of this third Lincoln, the Lincoln who was not only a great moral leader, not only a great intellectual director, but a great spiritual monitor, we have the Second Inaugural. It is not somuch a state paper in the ordinary sense as a bit of religious musing upon the past and the future of the Republic; and, long after the diapason undertone of cannon which accompanied it has faded away, it still rings in the nation’s ears as a haunting and uplifting harmony:
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.
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