He reminded listeners in the crowded Senate chamber that, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle,” a reflection of the Founders’ understanding that most political disagreements are not about the ends of government, but rather the means to the ends. Americans, after all, were united in republican principles, their allegiance to the Constitution and their commitment to liberty and tolerance. He asked his fellow citizens to “fly to the standard of the law” and to defend freedom of speech so that “error of opinion may be moderated where reason is left free to combat it.”
In 1861, Lincoln’s inaugural appeal to the South to remain in the Union, as Southern states were seceding, was conciliatory, a desperate attempt to avoid a civil war. Filled with anxiety about the future of the United States, Lincoln stated, in words that resonate in our time, as we contemplate divisions between the blue states and red states: “We can not remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them.”
His eloquent plea to Southerners endures: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection” which, he reminded the country, “will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
The most remarkable fact about the election of 1864, the historian Harold Hymn observed, “is that it occurred.” Lincoln, after the election, emphasized the fundamental lesson of republicanism: “We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” The rebellion had tested the proposition, as Lincoln had said at Gettysburg, whether a nation committed to republican principles could endure.
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address was a political masterpiece, suffused with themes of reconciliation and unity, as he sought to heal the wounds of the Civil War. His majestic phrase, “With malice toward none and charity for all,” punctuated the extension of a noble, generous and conciliatory hand to the South in a manner integral to reconstruction and the healing of the deep wounds inflicted on the republic.
Words matter. Leadership matters. Jefferson and Lincoln, two of America’s greatest presidents, sought unity in a time of deep division. Their enduring addresses remind us of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s insight that oratory “will make the reputation of a man.” Will Trump follow their path, reshape his reputation and urge unity over division and retribution? Inaugurations confer legitimacy and celebrate the peaceful democratic transfer of power. History seeks from Trump words to match the occasion.
David Adler, Ph.D., is president of The Alturas Institute, created to defend American democracy by advancing the Constitution, civic education, equal protection and gender equality.