My campaign for a more civil discourse today finds new support from a familiar voice.
"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.”
Sounds like the kind of advice we could use today, no?
Unfortunately, these words were not spoken today.
They were uttered 155 years ago.
By President Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address.
Lincoln made a call for unity at a time when the country was dealing with the greatest divide the nation has ever known - the Civil War.
He was dealing with the battered psche of the divided nation, with forces in the South still furious that they were about to be dragged back into the Union and forced to abandon slavery. At the same time, many in the North continued to see revenge on the South for seceding from the Union.
Lincoln delivered those healing words in the waning waning days of the Civil War, with a Union victory all but certain. He was not boastful of the North's success. This was not a celebration. Instead, the president offered a somber assessment of the nightmare of the previous four years.
He characterized the agony of war as divine retribution for the nation’s many years of tolerance or outright support for slavery.
His appeal was for reconciliation, the first act in binding the gaping wounds that had been delivered in the war between the states.
In that view, our challenge today doesn't seem all that daunting.
Of course, Lincoln did not have to deal with Twitter and Facebook.
We talk about it on today's editorial page.
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