Lincoln as Abolitionist (17)

To conclude this series of posts, a quotation from his second inaugural address seems appropriate. This was the speech that Frederick Douglass told him afterward was "a sacred effort." This speech is most famous for the phrase, "With malice toward none; with charity for all." But the words that preceded that famous phrase give a better idea of Abraham Lincoln's attitude toward the institution that plunged the nation into bloody civil war:

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict [no one on either side at the time had any doubt that slavery was what he meant] might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 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. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly to 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."