With Malice Toward None, With Charity For All

President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address began two of the most consequential months in American history.

Over a four-year period, the United States of America’s very survival hung in the balance as the Civil War raged throughout the country.  However, after years of uncertainty, a reunified America without slavery appeared within reach by the end of 1864.

After years of struggling to find a general to lead his army, President Abraham Lincoln found his general in Ulysses S. Grant, a leader whose perseverance and sacrifice played an instrumental role in bringing the Union Army victories.   After his appointment to overall command of the Union Army in March 1864, Grant tenaciously attacked Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, bringing the Confederacy to the brink of collapse.

By March 1865, Grant had Lee in an increasingly perilous position around Petersburg, Virginia, just south of the Confederate capital of Richmond.  Another Union army led by William Tecumseh Sherman continued to drive through the Southern states of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, destroying Confederate infrastructure and making it increasingly difficult for the Confederacy to continue to wage war.

All the death and destruction of the Civil War brought out many emotions among people from both sides.  Sadness was shared by everyone, but Northerners had particular anger directed toward the South, and many sought revenge.  Many Southerners feared what was to come if the South lost the war and appeared ready to fight to the bitter end, including the possibility of using guerrilla warfare tactics to continue resistance against the North.

After being re-elected to a second term as president, Lincoln’s task was to unite a fractured country that had endured so much over the previous four years.  His first opportunity to do so was during his second inaugural address, given at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 1865.  Could the country ever unite again as one nation?  There was genuine concern at the time the answer would be “No.”

Thousands gathered on a cold and rainy morning in Washington, D.C., to hear the president’s address.  After others spoke, including Vice President Andrew Johnson, it was time for Abraham Lincoln to address the large crowd.  Just before Lincoln rose from his chair, an observer of the moment named Noah Brooks, a journalist and friend of Lincoln’s, stated, “The sun, which had been obscured all day, burst forth with glory and light.”  Many believed this to be Divine Providence overlooking from above.

Like many Lincoln speeches, this one was short and powerful.  More than any other Lincoln speech, his second inaugural address looked to God to help heal the nation’s wounds.  He did not blame the South for the war nor gloat about its likely outcome.  Instead, Lincoln drew inspiration from various passages of the Bible to show solidarity.  He did not refer to the Confederacy as the enemy but rather chose to highlight the many similarities, not the differences, shared by all Americans.  Lincoln states:

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.  It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.  The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.  The Almighty has His own purposes.

Lincoln went on to say he believed the war to be God’s judgment to both sides for the evil of slavery, the central issue of the Civil War.  With profound words, he finishes:

Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 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 as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

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.

Americans should read the entirety of Abraham Lincoln’s address linked here.

That evening, Lincoln opened the White House to the public and greeted thousands of visitors. One such visitor was the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass.   Lincoln asked Douglass what he thought of his speech.  “That was a sacred effort,” replied Douglass.

The chairs at Appomattox Court House used by Grant and Lee on April 9, 1865.

On April 3, 1865, Union soldiers took control of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.  Just six days later, on April 9, General Robert E. Lee met with General Ulysses S. Grant to surrender his tired and hungry Confederate army at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.  Grant earned the nickname “Unconditional Surrender Grant” after accepting nothing less during his earlier victories in the war.  Lee dressed in his finest uniform because he believed he would be taken prisoner.  This is not what happened.

Following Lincoln’s approach in his second inaugural address the previous month, Grant gave the defeated Confederates generous terms of surrender.  The Southern soldiers could go home with their private property, including their horses, to be used for the upcoming planting season.  Officers kept their sidearms and the Union fed Lee’s hungry army.  Grant told other Union officers, “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.”  Grant and Lee had seen more carnage, bloodshed, and death than perhaps any two Americans in history.  It was time to heal the nation.

Abraham Lincoln was in Washington, D.C., on the night of April 10 when a large crowd gathered at the White House.  Lincoln chose not to give a speech but instead ordered the playing of the Southern song “Dixie,” which Lincoln called “one of the best tunes I ever heard.”

The next night, Lincoln gave a speech that is not remembered as one of his most memorable.  It began the discussion of how to implement what Lincoln called the “re-inauguration of the national authority – reconstruction.”  Lincoln articulated that the country’s best path forward was to unify as quickly as possible.  He believed he would have many more opportunities to address the subject of how to best bring the Confederacy back into the Union, but these were Lincoln’s final words on the subject.

As was the custom of the time, Lee’s Confederate Army participated in a formal surrender on April 12, four years to the day that the Civil War began with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.  In charge of the ceremony was Union Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain, a teacher of rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Maine who, like hundreds of thousands of Americans, volunteered to serve.  He was wounded six different times during the war but is most remembered for his leadership at the strategic location of Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.  General John B. Gordon led the Confederates, another veteran wounded multiple times in combat.

As part of the ceremony, Confederate soldiers marched in a line of procession to lay down their rifles.  As they marched forward to do this, Chamberlain ordered his men to attention with their rifles on their shoulders as a sign of respect towards the Confederates.  Gordon ordered his men to salute in return.  Soldiers, who days earlier had been killing each other, began to unite the country on their own.  Each side not only left with honor but also with an acknowledgment that they were all Americans once again.

Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, just five short days after Robert E. Lee surrendered, Abraham Lincoln and the First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.  After Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia declined an invitation to join them, the Lincolns invited friends Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, to attend with them.

A twenty-six-year-old actor from Maryland named John Wilkes Booth, who was both a Confederate sympathizer and white supremacist, had been in the crowd for Lincoln’s second inaugural address and his speech from the White House on April 11.  He had been plotting to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, and likely Ulysses S. Grant if the opportunity presented itself, in an attempt to bring confusion to the United States government and, at least in Booth’s mind, give the Confederacy some ability to continue the war.  While no attack occurred against Johnson or Grant, Seward was attacked by a co-conspirator but survived.  Tragically, Lincoln was not as fortunate.

After a lone soldier entrusted to guard Lincoln left his post, Booth snuck behind Lincoln and shot him in the back of the head with a single bullet as Lincoln watched the performance.  Booth then jumped on the stage and broke his leg, shouting a Latin phrase that translates as “Thus always I bring death to tyrants!”  Booth was killed twelve days later after being cornered by Union soldiers in Virginia.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Union Army, died the following morning.  Although not an official casualty, Lincoln was the last victim of a war he endured so much for.  At Lincoln’s bedside, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton broke the silence and grief of the moment after Lincoln’s death saying, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

America’s most destructive war was over.  In its wake, at least 620,000 Americans, or roughly 2.5% of the country’s entire population, lay dead.  New research suggests the number of dead might be closer to 750,000.  Hundreds of thousands of veterans were permanently disabled, with many losing limbs due to the war.

But as Lincoln discussed in his second inaugural address, this was the great price America paid to abolish slavery from American soil once and for all.  An entire generation of Americans made tremendous sacrifices to bring freedom to the enslaved.  There are really no other examples in world history of a country going to war against itself to free a specific group of people.  However, this is America’s history.  Today’s Americans need to understand and appreciate how brutal this fight was.

Lincoln’s death most likely brought harsher measures to the former Confederate states than otherwise would have occurred.  But America eventually moved forward as one nation with help from those on both sides of the war.  The country survived its most significant moment of crisis due to outstanding leadership, specifically from Lincoln and Grant.  While challenges remained, most notably racial segregation in most Southern states, a future generation of Americans rose to overcome those challenges.

It is not a coincidence that the United States grew substantially as a world power after the use of slave labor ended and liberty applied to everyone.  Today, people from all over the world and from every race, color, and creed call America their home.  The country has become one that, in the words of Lincoln, shows “malice toward none and charity for all.”