With Malice Toward None

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday February 16, 2003

***
[extemporaneous introduction: “President’s Day”]

A little less than a century-and-a-half ago, on a railroad train traveling through New England, some gentlemen had gathered in the smoking car to discuss the upcoming presidential election, which pitted no less than four different candidates against one another: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky; Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas of Illinois; former Speaker of the House John Bell from Tennessee (representing the "Constitutional Union" party); and for the newly-organized Republicans, a little known "railsplitter from the West" named Abraham Lincoln, also from Illinois, who only two years earlier had lost to Douglas in a race for a seat in the Senate.

But even in defeat, the tall, gawky Lincoln had started to make something of a reputation for himself as an eloquent opponent of the extension of slavery, and in particular for his quick mind and clever wit, his uncanny ability in the heat of debate to conjure up an amusing story which precisely illustrated the point he was attempting to argue. And as these somber New Englanders discussed the relative strengths of Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge and Bell, they were interrupted in their conversation by a devout follower of the millennialist preacher William Miller, who announced to them: "Before the election of 1860, the world will have come to an end, and Jesus Christ will be President of the Universe!" "Sir," responded one of the old Yankees as he puffed on his cigar, "I will bet you ten dollars that he won't win in New Hampshire."

Abraham Lincoln carried New Hampshire that election, along with 15 other northern states to capture the Presidency with only 40% of the popular vote. Before he had even been inaugurated, seven southern slaveholding states had seceded from the Union, and the nation was poised on the brink of Civil War. When the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter was fired upon by rebel troops, only a month into his Presidency, Lincoln found himself confronting a challenge which would have tested the abilities of even a divinely-inspired leader.

And ironically, his ability to meet that challenge, as judged by history, has indeed elevated him to semi-divine status. In his essay "Civil Religion in America," sociologist Robert Bellah traces in some detail the symbolic identification of the martyred Lincoln with the martyred Christ in the American mind. Lincoln, with his whiskers and his stove-pipe hat, perched upon a throne of marble at the head of a reflecting pool; the Great Emancipator; the President who sacrificed his own life so that the nation, the Union, might live.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Abraham Lincoln lately, and not just because his birthday was on the 12th, and this is President’s Day weekend. To my mind, America’s first Republican President was far and away America’s best Republican President, and arguably the best President of any party ever to serve our country. Washington, Jefferson, FDR...maybe Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, or Teddy Roosevelt...and I know there are still some who would like to add Ronald Reagan’s face to the line-up on Mount Rushmore... but frankly, there aren’t too many of this nation’s former chief executives who are even in the same league as the 16th President of the United States.

As for the current tenet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought for awhile about trying to make comparisons between “Honest” Abe Lincoln and George “Dubya” Bush -- re-writing this sermon as “A Tale of Two Presidents,” as it were -- but somehow it just didn’t seem appropriate, or fair, despite my growing conviction that our 43rd President is neither as dumb as he sounds, nor as amiable and good-natured as he likes to pretend.

But it also seems to me that there is much that Mr. Bush could learn from the example of Mr. Lincoln, and not just for his own benefit, but for the benefit of our nation. Historians sometimes like to debate whether or not great leaders are exceptional individuals who have the insight and the capacity to shape crucial events around them, or rather are in fact shaped and created by those events, by trial and error in the crucible of crisis. And Abraham Lincoln is often pointed to as an example of both these theories.

Was Lincoln always an extraordinary man, or was he simply an ordinary man confronted by extraordinary circumstances, who somehow managed to find within himself extraordinary qualities equal to the challenges he faced? And if so, what special talent did he possess that enabled him to discover that hidden store of ability within him, and bring it to the surface precisely when it was needed in our nation’s time of trial?

I think it’s important to remember that back in his own day, Lincoln himself was anything but a popular President. As Paul Boller, professor emeritus of history at Texas Christian University (and, I’m told, a Unitarian Universalist) has observed:

No President has been vilified the way Lincoln was during the Civil War. He was attacked on all sides: by abolitionists, Negro-phobes, states'-righters, strict constructionists, radicals, conservatives, armchair strategists, and by people who just did not like his looks or resented his storytelling. From the day of his inauguration to the day of his assassination the invective was unrelenting. Among other things, Lincoln was called an ape, a baboon, a buffoon, a clown, a usurper, a traitor, a tyrant, a monster, an idiot, a eunuch, a bigot, a demagogue, a lunatic, a despot, a blunderer, a charlatan, and a bully.

One New York newspaper regularly referred to him as "that hideous baboon at the other end of the avenue" and said that "[P.T.] Barnum should buy and exhibit him as a zoological curiosity." The Illinois State Register called him "the craftiest and most dishonest politician that ever disgraced an office in America".... No wonder Lincoln said, when asked how it felt to be President, "You have heard about the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail? A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk."

Actually, Lincoln's personal favorite anecdote about himself is said to be a story concerning two Quaker women who were comparing him with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. "I think Jefferson will succeed," said the first lady. "Why does thee think so?" asked the second. "Because Jefferson is a praying man." "But so is Abraham a praying man." "Yes," responded the first woman, "But the Lord will think Abraham is joking."

Lincoln's proclivities as a humorist often annoyed as well as amused those around him, but for Lincoln himself, humor was essential. He once asked a group of his cabinet members "Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do." Lincoln likewise frequently used humor to smooth over his disappointment with his subordinates. In 1862, angered by General McClellan's reluctance to engage the Confederate forces, he wrote a letter of a single sentence: "If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while -- your's respectfully, A. Lincoln."

And likewise, when General "Fighting Joe" Hooker sent the President a dispatch datelined "Headquarters in the Saddle," Lincoln dryly commented "The trouble with Hooker is that he's got his headquarters where his hindquarters should be." Ulysses S. Grant once benefited from the protection of Lincoln's wit. When members of a Temperance committee urged the President to fire General Grant on account of his drunkenness, Lincoln reportedly said "I wish one of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant is drinking. I would like to send a barrel of it to every one of my generals."

Yet at no time was Lincoln's humor more revealing than when he directed it against himself. It is said that as a young attorney practicing in Springfield Illinois, Lincoln was approached by a man of rather forbidding countenance, who suddenly drew a pistol and thrust it into Lincoln's face. "What seems to be the matter?" Lincoln inquired, with all the calmness and self-possession he could muster. "Years ago," replied the man, "I swore an oath that if I ever came across a man uglier than myself, I'd shoot him on the spot." Lincoln smiled. "Shoot me," he said. "If I'm uglier than you I don't want to live."

Lincoln, of course, survived that encounter only to respond years later to Stephen Douglas's accusation that he was two-faced by putting the question to their audience: "If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?" And he loved to tell the tale of the women he met riding one afternoon, who stared at him intently and then exclaimed "I do believe you are the ugliest man I ever saw." "Madam," Lincoln replied, "you are probably right, but I can't help it." "No," she said thoughtfully, "you can't help it. But you might at least stay at home." Even Lincoln's own wife told this story of their first meeting at a ball in Springfield. "He said to me, 'Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you in the worst way.' And then he proceeded to do so!"

Six-foot-four in his stocking feet, with sharp, angular features, a high-pitched voice, and muscles honed by a youth spent cutting wood on the Illinois frontier, a man who taught himself the law by reading borrowed lawbooks and spent fifteen years of his adult life paying off debts he might have easily walked away from, Lincoln's self-effacing humor reflects the heart of a man who felt, perhaps, that life was too serious to be taken too seriously; and that forgiveness, tolerance, honesty and compassion are the true sources of honor and personal integrity.

Following the circuit judge through Illinois, as frontier lawyers did in those days, Lincoln was once approached by an angry man who passionately urged the reluctant attorney to represent him a lawsuit for two and a half dollars against an impoverished debtor. Lincoln tried without success to dissuade his irate client from pursuing this revenge, and finally accepted the case for a $10 retainer. He then gave half of this fee to the defendant, who readily confessed his debt and made it good, to the entire satisfaction of all parties involved.

And as President, it is said that Lincoln was often criticized for speaking kindly of his enemies when he ought to be thinking of destroying them. His response was one that I have often quoted myself these past 18 months, and which we would all do well to remember ourselves. "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

Perhaps one of the most famous (and telling) stories about Lincoln concerns the time two men stormed into his law office and asked him to settle a dispute over how long a man's legs should be in proportion to his body. The men had been arguing hotly for hours, and Lincoln listened carefully as each once more presented his position. Lincoln reflected upon the matter, and then gravely delivered his decision (listen carefully to this): "This question has been a source of controversy for untold ages, and it is about time it should be definitely decided. It has led to bloodshed in the past, and there is no reason to suppose it will not lead to the same in the future. Therefore, after much thought and consideration, not to mention worry and anxiety, it is my opinion, all side issues being swept aside, that a man's lower limbs, in order to preserve harmony of proportion, should be at least long enough to reach from his body to the ground."

Another time, Lincoln and a certain judge become involved in a discussion about trading horses, and it was agreed that they themselves should make a trade the following morning, the horses to be unseen until that time. At the appointed hour the judge arrived leading "the sorriest-looking specimen of a horse ever seen in those parts." A few minutes later Lincoln showed up, carrying a wooden sawhorse over his shoulders. The shouts and laughter of the crowd that had gathered were greatly increased when Lincoln set down his sawhorse, examined the animal the Judge had brought, and declared "Well Judge, this is the first time I ever got the worst of it in a horse trade."

Perhaps some of these stories stray a just a bit from the historical truth. But they are true, I suppose, in a different way. Few historians, for example, give much credence to the tale of a foreign diplomat who unexpectedly walked in on Lincoln while he was polishing his boots. When the diplomat had finished expressing his surprise that the President of the United States should black his own boots, Lincoln reputedly asked "And you sir, whose boots do YOU black?" Yet between the Lincoln of history and the Lincoln of myth there exists a Lincoln of folklore who speaks to us of the American spirit with an eloquence that, in its own way, surpasses the others in both its humanity and its wisdom. It is from THESE qualities that Lincoln the man drew the strength to become Lincoln the Legend.

t is said that Lincoln set aside his pen twice before at last signing the Emancipation Proclamation, commenting to an aide: "I have been shaking hands since nine o'clock this morning, and my right arm is almost paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say 'He hesitated.'" Then Lincoln picked up the pen for the third time, and slowly and firmly wrote his signature.

Lincoln’s foresight in predicting that history would remember him principally as “the Great Emancipator” was only partially prophetic. There are some who also claim that he foresaw his own death, in a dream, but this is truly the stuff of myth. More recently, revisionist historians have begun to examine other aspects of Lincoln’s character: Lincoln the corporate lawyer, whose clients were often big railroad interests; Lincoln the political pragmatist, who at times appeared to compromise his personal convictions in order to achieve public favor; Lincoln the racist, whose hatred of the institution of slavery was not necessarily accompanied by an affection for African-American slaves. Even Emancipation is viewed as a political act, in that it only freed slaves who lived in territory controlled by the Confederacy.

Yet it seems to me that the most telling aspect of Lincoln’s character is that he never allowed the righteousness of his personal convictions to degenerate into self-righteousness: a belief that his personal convictions were righteous simply because they were his. Lincoln’s personal opposition to slavery was formed early in his life, and grew out of a sense of personal humility and compassion for others which was rooted, at bottom, in a profound sense of empathy which could not deny to another human being freedoms so deeply cherished by himself.

He once said that “whenever I hear someone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally,” and often expressed his belief that the bloodshed of Civil War was God’s punishment of both North and South for the sin of slaveholding. Likewise, his compassion for his defeated enemies was remarkable, as articulated in the language of his Second Inaugural Address: “with malice toward none, with charity to 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’s true greatness was that he understood his weaknesses as a leader in a time of great national crisis, and yet he never surrendered to them by retreating into a posture of self-righteous certainty, but instead always acted from the depth of his own personal convictions AND his understanding of a greater public good, which dwarfed his own personal ambitions and talents.

No doubt it gave him far less torment, only a week after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, to sign the executive order ending conscription into the Union army. The following night Lincoln and his wife attended a performance of the play “Our American Cousin” at the Ford Theater. At one point in the play the heroine, reclining in a garden seat, calls for a shawl to protect her from the draft. "You are mistaken, Miss Mary," ad libbed actor Edward Sothern. "The draft has already been stopped by order of the President." Lincoln laughed what was to be his last laugh, no doubt pleased with this pleasant reminder that the terrible war which had defined his Presidency at last was over. Less than an hour later, John Wilkes Booth entered the Presidential box with a pistol, and took the life of our 16th President: a life given, like so many others in those bloody five years, so that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, should not have perished from the earth.

***
READING: from “Civil Religion in America” by Robert Bellah

With the Civil War, a new theme of death, sacrifice, and rebirth enters the civil religion. It is symbolized in the life and death of [Abraham] Lincoln. Nowhere is it stated more vividly than in the Gettysburg Address, itself part of the Lincolnian “New Testament” among the civil scriptures. Robert Lowell has recently pointed out the “insistent use of birth images” in this speech explicitly devoted to “these honored dead”: “brought forth,” “conceived,” “created,” “a new birth of freedom.” He goes on to say:

The Gettysburg Address is a symbolic and sacramental act. Its verbal quality is resonance combined with a logical, matter of fact, prosaic brevity.... In his words, Lincoln symbolically died, just as the Union soldiers really died -- and as he himself was soon really to die. By his words, he gave the field of battle a symbolic significance that it had lacked. For us and our country, he left Jefferson’s ideals of freedom and equality joined to the Christian sacrificial act of death and rebirth. I believe this as a meaning that goes beyond sect or religion and beyond peace and war, and is now part of our lives as a challenge, obstacle, and hope....

The symbolic equation of Lincoln with Jesus was made relatively early. [William] Herndon, who had been Lincoln’s law partner, wrote: "For fifty years God rolled Abraham Lincoln through his fiery furnace. He did it to try Abraham and to purify him for his purposes. This made Mr. Lincoln humble, tender, forbearing, sympathetic to suffering, kind, sensitive, tolerant; broadening, deepening, and widening his whole nature; making him the noblest and loveliest character since Jesus Christ.... I believe that Lincoln was God’s chosen one."

With the Christian archetype in the background, Lincoln, “our martyred president,” was linked to the war dead, those who “gave the last full measure of devotion.” The theme of sacrifice was indelibly written into the civil religion.