Malice Toward None; Charity For All: Lincoln’s Vision Of Reconciliation For All Americans

Thomas J. Stipanowich (Pepperdine; Google Scholar), Malice Toward None; Charity for All: Lincoln’s Vision of Reconciliation for All Americans, ABA Dispute Resolution Magazine (Sept. 2024):

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

The closing words of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address are among the most remarkable ever spoken by any leader—let alone a war leader looking ahead after four years of civil conflict that tore a nation apart, divided families, and inflicted untold bloodshed and suffering. Though the war still raged, Lincoln’s towering rhetoric framed an appeal to Americans North and South to look forward to a time when hatred and bloodletting gave way to healing and mutual understanding. It was an extraordinarily hopeful vision, especially given the centuries-old common heritage at the heart of the conflict: Black slavery. Thanks largely to Lincoln’s leadership, millions of enslaved Black Americans were now free, or hopeful of freedom from enslavement. Lincoln’s vision of reconciliation included them all.

The task Lincoln faced during his presidency may be viewed as a kind of vast, complex “negotiation” involving interactions with a wide array of stakeholders with disparate interests and aims. In this mega-negotiation, Lincoln brought to bear a variety of tools and sources of power and leverage, of which military power was but one. Over time, the aim of preserving the Union evolved into creating a more perfect Union by means of what might be called “Lincoln’s Triad”: restoring the integrity of the Union, Emancipation of Black slaves, and, finally, mutual reconciliation on a national scale. Along the way, a major “new” group of stakeholders, Black Americans, would be invited to the table from which they had so long been barred.

When he became president in 1861, Lincoln inherited a fractured Union. Lincoln had long shared the view of “the great mass of mankind” that slavery was “a great moral wrong; and their feelings against it . . . [lie] at the very foundation of their sense of justice.” Black slavery also made a mockery of the principle at the heart of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal”—a point Lincoln drove home frequently. He also believed, however, that as Chief Executive his authority to interfere with slavery was limited by the Constitution. Once elected, Lincoln tried to take a conciliatory tone, urging supporters to “at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.” …

On the evening of Tuesday, April 11, a vast crowd gathered outside the White House to hear Lincoln speak. Lincoln reflected not on Union victory, but on the future. He spoke enthusiastically about Louisiana’s new state constitution, which not only emancipated slaves but also provided for equality in education for the races. He also expressed hope that the state would give the right to vote to those Black Americans “who serve our cause as soldiers” and possibly some others.

As Lincoln looked forward, he was facing what he had described as “the greatest question ever presented to practical statesmanship”—the re-integration of a society riven by civil war, complicated by the presence of millions of freed Black slaves whose precise status was uncertain. In expressing the hope that all the people of his wounded country could and would forsake hatred and instead treat each other with tolerance, kindness, and mercy, Lincoln surely understood that he might not live to see that happen. The focus of unprecedented venom and ridicule, he had committed what many foes considered the unpardonable sin of elevating Black Americans to freedom, and potentially to full citizenship. One “Lincoln-loather,” a disaffected actor named John Wilkes Booth who heard Lincoln’s evening speech, vowed that Lincoln would never make another talk. That Friday, April 14, Booth made good his threat by firing a bullet into Lincoln’s great brain.

If Lincoln had lived, might he have accomplished his vision for a restored and newly-integrated Union? There is no question that Lincoln had made a good start. In addition to a decisive military victory, the passage of a Constitutional Amendment ending slavery, and signal experiments on reconstruction, Lincoln had taken strides to expand the country and the economy to accommodate new realities. Based on his early efforts, it is likely that Lincoln would have tried to steer a course that encouraged creative improvisation, collaboration, and compromise.

When Lincoln died, so, too, did the promise of building a new, more fully integrated society on the ashes of war—a promise that remains unfulfilled. Those who are moved to embrace the path of reconciliation envisioned by Lincoln, despite all the odds against its achievement, may find inspiration from Niebuhr:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

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