{"id":12664,"date":"2015-03-05T01:42:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T05:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=12664"},"modified":"2015-03-05T01:42:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T05:42:11","slug":"lincolns-shrewd-sermon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2015\/03\/lincolns-shrewd-sermon\/","title":{"rendered":"Lincoln’s Shrewd Sermon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s second inauguration as President of the United States. On that date, Lincoln delivered an address that, while never quite rivaling the Gettysburg Address in terms of fame, has nevertheless earned the lasting admiration of many Americans.<\/p>\n

Carl Sandberg termed it<\/a> \u201dthe great American poem\u201d; Frederick Douglass praised it as \u201cmore like a sermon than a state paper.\u201d Douglass more closely hits the mark. Still, it seems wisest simply to praise the second inaugural as a theologically informed and politically shrewd speech.<\/p>\n

The address drips with biblical quotation and allusion. Despite its brevity, Lincoln in his address quotes the old and new testaments repeatedly. Themes of sin, providence, and reconciliation dominate.<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy<\/a>
Courtesy of Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Lincoln\u2019s speech was no exercise in theological speculation, his straightforward explanation for the war\u2019s bloody toll notwithstanding. Lincoln understood the war \u201cthe woe due to those by whom the offence came,\u201d the offense being slavery. In other words, Lincoln contended that both northerners and southerners were guilty for slavery\u2019s origin and persistence. The wages of sin were death. And if God willed that the war continued \u201cuntil all the wealth piled by the bond-man\u2019s 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 \u2026 \u2018the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.\u201d Ultimately, God had chosen to punish the United States with the scourge of war.<\/p>\n

If placing the war within the overarching frame of God\u2019s providence, Lincoln did not hesitate to name and blame the war\u2019s more proximate causes. And here Lincoln, despite professing a desire not to judge, judged harshly. For starters, Lincoln blamed the South for starting the war. He observed that as he delivered his first inaugural, \u201cinsurgents agents were in the city seeking to destroy<\/em> it without war.\u201d If both North and South \u201cdeprecated war \u2026 one of them would make<\/em> war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept<\/em> war rather than let it perish.\u201d No moral equivalence here.<\/p>\n

And on the matter of slavery, Lincoln returned to the position of his Republican Party in the late 1850s and during the 1860 presidential campaign. Everyone, Lincoln said, knew that slavery caused the war, as southern slaves \u201cconstituted a peculiar and powerful interest \u2026 To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.\u201d Lincoln here reminded southerners (and northern Democrats) that the North had not begun the war out of a desire to extirpate southern slavery.<\/p>\n

Next comes Lincoln\u2019s famous observation that both sides \u201cread the same Bible, and pray to the same God.\u201d He concludes that the \u201cprayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.\u201d In between, however, Lincoln inserts a wry aside: \u201cIt may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God\u2019s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men\u2019s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.\u201d Lincoln here alludes to Genesis 3. Note, however, that while professing not to judge, Lincoln has done exactly that! Slavery was a terribly evil that the South started the war in order to defend and expand. Lincoln allowed that the Almighty had his own purposes, and in so doing guarded against northern self-righteousness, but he also resolutely affirmed the justice of the Republican and Union causes.<\/p>\n

Finally, Lincoln\u2019s famous closing sentence called on northerners to proceed \u201cwith malice toward none; with charity for all; [and] with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.\u201d They should win the war and then \u201ccare for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan\u201d and then \u201cdo all which may achieve a just, and a lasting peace.\u201d Here Lincoln extends a message of charity and reconciliation and also signals his distance from more radical Republicans who want a measure of vengeance against a defeated Confederacy and a more thorough reconstruction of southern society. The exact path Lincoln would have traveled after the war remains rather unclear. In his final days, he was contemplating limited black suffrage.<\/p>\n

None of this is to take issue with the plaudits the Second Inaugural has rightly received. We would do well to remember, that Lincoln had always been less of a religious idealist and more of a careful and shrewd politician. Fortunately, those two aspects of his thought came together at the time of his second inauguration.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s second inauguration as President of the United States. On that date, Lincoln delivered an address that, while never quite rivaling the Gettysburg Address in terms of fame, has nevertheless earned the lasting admiration of many Americans. Carl Sandberg termed it \u201dthe great American poem\u201d; Frederick Douglass praised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,500,357,8],"tags":[2832,2831,2250,32],"class_list":["post-12664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abraham-lincoln","category-american-religious-history","category-civil-war","category-john-turner","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-civil-war","tag-second-inaugural","tag-turners-posts"],"yoast_head":"\nLincoln's Shrewd Sermon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration as President of the United States. 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