A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  When Lincoln introduced the Bible in the third paragraph, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God,” he signaled his intention to speak theologically as well as politically about the meaning of the war. In the 701 words of his second inaugural address, Lincoln mentioned God fourteen times, quoted the Bible four times, and invoked prayer three times. The Bible had been quoted only one time in the previous eighteen addresses, by John Quincy Adams, but the lack of precedent did not deter Lincoln.

  This sentence is filled with multiple meanings. First, Lincoln was affirming the use of the Bible and prayer by both Union and Confederate soldiers. He was also probing the appropriate use of the Bible. Throughout the war, Lincoln had hosted delegations of ministers and politicians, most of whom were quite confident that God was on the side of the Union. Lincoln here suggested that the Bible and prayer can be used as weapons to curry God’s favor for one side or the other. On one side stood those who read a Bible that they steadfastly believed sanctioned slavery. On the other side were those who understood the Bible as encouraging the abolition of slavery.

  Lincoln asked how it was possible for one side to seek God’s aid against the other side. He inveighed against a tribal God who took the side of a section or party. But Lincoln seemed to balance judgment from the Old Testament with mercy from the New Testament: “Let us judge not that we be not judged.” These words came from the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus advocated a new ethic rooted in humility and compassion.

  Lincoln, throughout his address, balanced pretension with possibility. The pretension of the misuse of religion provides the transition to Lincoln’s major theological affirmation of his address: “The Almighty has His own purposes.” It becomes clear here that Lincoln was building on his private “Meditation on the Divine Will,” written in 1864. He began that reflection with similar words, “The will of God prevails.” After discussing different players, Lincoln concentrates on God as the primary actor. He described God’s actions: “He now wills to remove,” “He gives to both North and South, this terrible war,” “Yet, if God wills that it continue.”

  Alexander Gardner took the only photograph of Lincoln speaking, here at the second inaugural on March 4, 1865, standing on a platform in front of the east portico of the Capitol.

  Though praising the inscrutable intentions of God, Lincoln did not retreat to agnosticism. He focused on God’s purposes by invoking a fiery biblical quotation from Matthew 18:7: “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!” The purposes of God can also bring judgment.

  Before his election as president, Lincoln had been willing to contain slavery politically and geographically, but he had since come to the conclusion that its moral implications could not be contained. When he said, “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses,” Lincoln employed the sanction of Scripture to initiate his indictment of slavery and his formal charge against the American people. He did not say “Southern slavery.” By saying “American slavery,” Lincoln again used inclusive language to assert that North and South must together own the offense. He was not simply trying to set the historical record straight. He was thinking of the future. Lincoln understood, as the radicals in his party did not, that the Southern people would never be able to take their full places in the Union if they felt that they alone were saddled with the guilt for the national offense of slavery.

  Who was this God who “gives to both North and South this terrible war”? Lincoln answered that question by observing that God’s activity is no “departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to him.” Lincoln heard Phineas Gurley speak of the “divine attributes” of God at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. Gurley learned this language from Professor Charles Hodge at Princeton Seminary, who titled chapter 5 in his Systematic Theology “The Nature and Attributes of God,” spending nearly eighty pages making the case that attributes are “essential to the nature of a divine Being” with personality.

  As the address built toward its final paragraph, Lincoln made an unexpected political and religious move. Speaking on the eve of military victory, when many expected him to celebrate the successes of the Union, he called upon his audience to recognize a perilous evil in their midst. Instead of self-congratulation, he asked his fellow citizens for self-analysis.

  Lincoln’s second inaugural resembled a Puritan jeremiad as he combined both criticism and reaffirmation. The task of the preacher was to point out to the congregation the cause of God’s anger. Because of the evil of the “offence” of slavery, the nation was deserving of God’s punishment. As in a jeremiad, Lincoln prosecuted his case not in generalities but with concrete, visual representations. He reached back beyond the nation’s birth as he recalled “two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil.” Lincoln reminded his audience that the stain of slavery was enmeshed in the fabric of American history from its beginnings. His images reached their zenith in “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” The sword of military battle was the judgment of God. Lincoln drew his confidence in “the judgments of the Lord” from Psalm 19, the fourth biblical passage he cited.

  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 now moved quickly from the past to the future, from judgment to hope. In an address filled with surprises, he turned briskly to his unexpected conclusion: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Lincoln began his final exhortation by asking his audience to enter a new era, armed not with enmity but with forgiveness. He summoned them to overcome the boundary of sectionalism, of North and South, and come together in reconciliation.

  In the final paragraph, Lincoln offered an ethical imperative, a response to his political and theological indicative declared in the first three paragraphs. In the Presbyterian sermons that Lincoln heard, the preacher would have spent the majority of the sermon reciting a grand indicative about what God had done. The indicative pattern of Christ’s life, teaching, and death led to the imperative for selfless love and reconciliation. This was a frequent motif in Phineas Gurley’s sermons.

  Lincoln’s imperative was ethical in content if pastoral in tone. Lincoln concluded his second inaugural address with a coda of healing: “to bind up,” “to care for,” “to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace.” Portraits of widows and orphans now balanced the images of blood and swords.

  To win the peace there must be reconciliation. Lincoln declared that the true test of the aims of war is how the victors treat those who have been defeated. If enmity continued after hostilities ceased, the war would have been in vain. These are no maudlin words crafted for emotional effect. His words describe the tough, practical living actions that must replace retribution with “charity.” He set this mandate for himself as he looked forward to his second term.

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AFTER LISTENING to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, was determined to attend the inaugural reception that evening at the White House. Thousands of people crowded the streets outside the White House waiting for the gates to open at 8 p.m. Immediately a free-for-all began. William H. Crook, Lincoln’s bodyguard, observed, “The White House looked as if a regiment of rebel troops had been quartered there—with permission to forage.” Lincoln, in the East Room, looking exhausted, prepared to shake the hands of the more than six thousand people who would crowd the reception.

  Douglass found himself barred at the door by two policemen. When he protested, they informed him that their “directions were to admit no one of color.” He understood that the old practices were still in effect. Doug
lass spoke up that there must be some mistake for “no such order could have emanated from President Lincoln.” In order to end the war of words that was blocking the doorway, one officer offered to escort Douglass in. It was not long, however, before Douglass found himself being ushered through a window that had been set up as a short-term exit. Douglass saw the ploy and asked a guest to please tell Mr. Lincoln that he was being held up. The petition reached the president.

  All of the handshaking ceased as Frederick Douglass entered the East Room. As he walked in, Lincoln called out, “Here comes my friend Douglass.” Lincoln’s greeting was said in such a loud voice “that all around could hear him.” Taking Douglass by the hand, the president said, “I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?”

  Douglass replied, “Mr. Lincoln, I must not detain you with my poor opinion, when there are thousands waiting to shake hands with you.”

  “No, no,” Lincoln answered, “you must stop a little Douglass; there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it?”

  “Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.”

  SOON AFTER LINCOLN’S INAUGURATION, General Grant invited the president to come down to his headquarters at City Point, Virginia. “I think the rest will do you good.” Lincoln arrived on the River Queen on March 24, 1865. Always enjoying visiting with the troops, Lincoln spent time talking with wounded soldiers in the hospital tents, making a special point of speaking with wounded Confederates.

  Although Lincoln would make no public predictions about the end of the war, privately he knew that Robert E. Lee, for all his deserved renown, could not hold out much longer. Grant and Meade and the Army of the Potomac were slowly closing off both supply routes and escape routes for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

  With his army down to fifty thousand men, of whom thirty-five thousand were fit to fight, with desertions sapping his strength daily, Lee decided to take one more desperate gamble. He would try to break through the weakest point of the Union line. On the day after Lincoln’s arrival at City Point, Lee dispatched General John B. Gordon, who had succeeded Stonewall Jackson, to attempt a breakout against Fort Sted-man. Gordon punched open a hole in the Union line, but it was quickly closed as Lincoln watched from a distance. In desperate fighting, the Confederates lost 5,000 men compared to Union losses of 1,500.

  On March 28, 1865, Grant arranged a meeting with the president, Admiral David Porter, and General Sherman, who had come up by boat from North Carolina. During the conference, Sherman asked Lincoln: “What is to be done with the rebel armies when defeated?” The president offered a lengthy reply stressing his desire for reconciliation. Lincoln told Sherman he wanted to “get the men comprising the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work on their farms and in their shops.” Sherman wanted to know if that generosity would include Jefferson Davis and the top Confederate leaders. Lincoln responded with a story about a teetotaler who when asked whether he wanted his lemonade spiked with whiskey responded that it would be all right if he didn’t know about it. Grant, Sherman, and Porter understood the president to say that if Davis and the chief Confederate leaders were to escape it would be all right with him.

  As the meeting was about to conclude, Lincoln turned to Sherman. “Do you know why I took a shine to you and Grant?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Lincoln. You have been extremely kind to me, far more than I deserve.”

  “Well,” Lincoln replied, “you never found fault with me.”

  Sherman left immediately to return to his troops and never saw Lincoln again. He wrote later, “Of all the men I have met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other.”

  Grant knew that he now had Lee cornered, having cut off nearly all his escape routes to the south. On April 2, 1865, the Army of the Potomac attacked all along the lines at Petersburg. After a siege of 293 days, the Confederates finally abandoned both Petersburg and Richmond on the same evening.

  When Lincoln learned that Confederate forces had left Richmond, he decided he wanted to visit the capital of the Confederacy. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, concerned that snipers might still be in Richmond, telegraphed Lincoln urging him not to expose himself to great risk. Lincoln replied, “I will take care of myself.”

  Why did he go? Southerners said, then and later, that he came with a ghoulish desire to gloat over a city still burning. The real reason he went was revealed in his actions and words there.

  On the morning of April 4, 1865, Lincoln started up the James River for Richmond on the River Queen. Lincoln took Tad with him, who was celebrating his twelfth birthday that day. Admiral Porter had hoped to arrive with a grand display of naval power, but the Confederates had blocked and mined the river. By the time his original flotilla of ships approached Richmond, Lincoln and his entourage—Porter, two officers, and a guard of twelve sailors in blue jackets and round blue hats—were reduced to travel in what amounted to a large rowboat. As the boat docked at Richmond’s Rocket’s Landing, the president could see smoke rising from the burning city. General Godfrey Weitzel, the new Union commander of the Army of the James, had been alerted to Lincoln’s plans, but since the president was not expected until the afternoon, no honor guard was present to meet him.

  Although Lincoln entered Richmond unannounced, the tall man with the silk hat did not go far before the city’s black residents recognized him. A woman greeted him. “I know that I am free, for I have seen Father Abraham.” Lincoln said to a black man who dropped to his knees, “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.” With each block, more black residents joined the parade, many coming up to the president to shake his hand or simply touch him. White residents observed the pageant from the steps of their homes or stayed behind locked doors.

  Lincoln’s destination was General Weitzel’s headquarters at Jefferson Davis’s house, three blocks from Richmond’s Capitol Square. As the president arrived, the crowd broke into cheers. Lincoln turned and bowed in response. He entered the house and sat at the departed Davis’s desk. While soldiers were taking everything that was not bolted down in the White House of the Confederacy, Lincoln took only a glass of water.

  In the afternoon, Lincoln toured the burned district of the city and the prisons, the conditions of which had long been a source of anger in the North. Now the prisons were filled with Confederates, but the evidence of years of inhumane conditions prompted a Union officer to exclaim, “Jefferson Davis should be hanged.” Lincoln replied quietly, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

  Lincoln left Richmond late in the afternoon. As he was departing, General Weitzel asked for his counsel in dealing with the proud but frightened people of the Confederate capital as well as the prisoners. Lincoln replied, “If I were in your place, I’d let ’em up easy, let ’em up easy.”

  WHEN RICHMOND FELL, Lee led his exhausted troops toward the last rail link to North Carolina and a hoped-for meeting with General Joseph Johnston’s troops. General Philip Sheridan’s cavalry raced to cut off Lee’s supplies at Amelia Court House. On the night of April 7, 1865, Grant passed on to Lincoln a note from Sheridan: “If the thing is pressed I think Lee will surrender.” Lincoln replied: “Let the thing be pressed.”

  Early on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, Lee asked for an interview with Grant for the purposes of surrender. An aide of Grant was sent to find a suitable meeting place and secured a first-floor parlor in Wilmer McLean’s house in the little town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. McLean had owned a farm at Manassas in 1861, but when a shell came through his window in the first battle of Bull Run he decided to move to this small town in isolated southern Virginia to escape the war.

  Lee arrived first, in full dress uniform, with saber at his side. Grant arrived at 1:30 in a mud-spattered private’s uniform. Grant wished to preserve Lee’s dignity
even as he asked for the surrender of his army. If Lincoln had been firm that he wanted Grant to accept only unconditional surrender, now Grant, with Lincoln’s full backing, offered a generous peace. Each Confederate soldier would be allowed to return to his home and a normal life, and he could take his horse and mule with him. Lee was grateful. “This will have the best possible effect upon the men. It will be very gratifying and will do much toward conciliating our people.”