Lincoln speech that directly resonates today

Ronald J. Rosenberg, BridgeTower Media Newswires

Unquestionably the Gettysburg Address was President Lincoln’s most eloquent speech. But it is not the most pertinent to the times we live in.

As we experience the shattering partisan divide of this year’s presidential election, it would be wise to reflect on what might be considered another one of Lincoln’s greatest addresses. It is one that particularly still speaks to us today: his second inaugural address given on March, 4, 1865 on the steps of a Capitol that was, appropriately, still under construction.

The day began in a driving rain, creating cold muddy puddles for an audience who gathered to hear the president. Included were many Union veterans recovering from ghastly battlefield wounds inflicted upon them by the Confederacy. With the end of the war in sight (Lee would surrender in weeks), it was naturally expected that Lincoln would speak of revenge and retribution.

Yet he did none of those things. Recognizing that while winning the war, the nation could easily lose its future unity and a permanent peace, he sent an affectionate message to the rebels. “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.” He reminded his battle-weary audience that the most important task was “to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” Notably, he did not qualify those words to apply only to the Union soldiers, but he was speaking of all the soldiers, North and South, Union and Confederate.

In its brevity it was a masterful six-minute speech, for he offered a victor’s generous forgiving view to his soon to be defeated Southern countrymen.

His intentions were in direct conflict with a Congress that believed a broad series of punitive actions should be taken, including hanging the Confederate leaders, erasing all state lines south of the Mason-Dixon Line and treating the region as a conquered nation. Still, Lincoln was adamant that those who were at war with the Union must be treated as returning fellow countrymen so that the nation could begin to “bind up..(its)..wounds.”

Americans are now divided as never before. There is or will be a visceral anger over who won, how the vote was counted, and even whether we are a nation willing to move past Election Day together or whether we are creating a permanent schism so deep, so cancerous, that it will jeopardize America’s existence.

Having endured four years of what remains America’s most devastating war, Lincoln recognized what we need to understand and embrace, today, that is that at the end of conflict – whether it is a contest among political parties – or otherwise - there needs to be the ability to put aside serious and often intractable differences and come together to create a shared future and unity.

Today, individuals are viciously attacked, abused, and libeled on social media and online merely for their different political views. Friendships, families, and business connections have fractured and failed over these differing political views.

The current First Amendment crisis created by a highly partisan big tech social media cartel is a grave threat to us all. They agreed to be a neutral platform that would not interfere with, censor or suppress legal speech and postings (as opposed to criminal ones, such as posting child pornography,) if Congress granted them immunity from defamation liability.
Congress did so in enacting Section 230 of Communications Decency Act. Since then, however, they have willfully breached their agreement and have become a un-American, highly partisan censor and suppressor of legal postings and speech merely because they disagree with them.

Winston Churchill remarked, “Democracy is the worst form of government...except for all the others...” That requires us to follow Lincoln’s most important message to the war-torn nation that it cannot afford to identify as Union or Confederate or now as Red or Blue, but only as Americans.

Lincoln summed it up best as usual: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed them ourselves.”

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Ronald J. Rosenberg, a graduate of St. John’s University Law School and resident of Old Westbury, is senior founding partner of Rosenberg, Calica & Birney LLP, a Garden City law firm.