“I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
These words from President Abraham Lincoln were taken from his “House Divided” speech delivered at Springfield, Ill., in June 1858.
Abraham Lincoln, who was born 211 years ago this month, was president during an era even more rancorous and polarized than our own. Yet he managed to navigate it — not in a way that pleased everyone or made him popular, but rather by keeping the good of the country always in his sights. His path has lessons for today’s leaders.
Lincoln’s political philosophy consisted of only a few ideas, and he believed that America itself was based on these ideas. He said in 1861 that he had “never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” In the same speech, he articulated what he believed to be the core promises of that document: that “liberty” was the American birthright and that in America and ultimately in the world “all should have an equal chance.”
As he put it in an 1848 speech, in politics “there are few things wholly evil or wholly good,” which means that “governmental policy” must typically be “an inseparable compound of the two.” As a result, even in his darkest moments, he looked for good in the ideas of those who disagreed with him, and he expected them to do the same.
This way of thinking meant that Lincoln never treated opponents as enemies. Even during the Civil War, he did not demonize Southerners or the South. He did not view those fighting on the other side as evil.
In 1865, when Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, the Civil War was nearing an end, and he was already thinking about how “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” In that same address, when he urged “malice toward none,” he meant it.
Lincoln was often accused of being noncommittal, of seeming to want things both ways. He would infuriate colleagues by telling them, “My policy is to have no policy.” He would change his mind, vacillate, and propose half-measures that displeased everyone. Many viewed him as weak.
Lincoln had important flaws, but was providentially suited to his times. In a time of disunity, he tried to remind Americans what united them. Amid conflict, he sought conciliation. Amid anger, he advocated “charity for all.” Amid despair, he summoned “the better angels of our nature.”
About the Constitution, President Lincoln in a speech to the New Jersey Senate said, “I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.”
In a speech in 1862 at Frederick, Md., Lincoln spoke his hope: “May our children and our children’s children to a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice under those glorious institutions bequeathed us by Washington and his compeers.”
We wonder what President Abraham Lincoln would have to say if he were here among us.
This month as we celebrate his birthday, today’s leaders at both the state and national level would do well to contemplate his wisdom.