“Nothing through passion and ill temper.”
On April 19, 1861, Private Luther Ladd became the first casualty of the Civil War. A seventeen–year–old mechanic from Massachusetts, Ladd had enlisted in the army with a sense of adventure and pro-Union patriotism. He was killed less than four days into his first mission when the citizens of Baltimore rioted as the 6th Massachusetts Infantry tried to make its way through the city to Camden train station. Within the next four years, over half a million enlisted soldiers would die; while thousands more Americans would become non-enlisted casualties of starvation, disease, suicide, and race-related violence.
In terms of lives lost, the Civil War remains the costliest military conflict in American history. Cities were burned, entire landscapes ransacked, and throughout it all there is ample evidence to suggest that Abraham Lincoln grieved deeply at the violence and bloodshed washing over the nation.
Numerous anecdotes exist about Lincoln’s struggle to find peace in a nation at war. He was known for personally interceding when distraught widows wrote to him begging for a son to be discharged so the veteran could help support his siblings at home, or for a soldier’s salary to be released when it was being withheld for some minor infraction. Lincoln’s own bouts with “melancholia” are well documented, and his sadness and frustration at the massive loss of life is at the forefront of his writings during his years in the White House.
Yet equally as obvious as Lincoln’s pain is his determination to rebuild and create a stronger nation. Throughout Lincoln’s legal and political career he sought to find resolution—to create compromises that would allow opposing forces to each bend, but not break. In hindsight this characteristic lends itself to both criticism and praise. But as a leader in a time of crisis, Abraham Lincoln drew strength as a man of a select few absolutes. In those principles that he held sacred, Lincoln was as unyielding as granite; he was willing to pursue every means necessary to save the Union. At the same time, he was a leader who chose to look beyond his own ambition to envision a nation where Americans would have to live together after this great conflict had finally ended. He tempered determination with compassion, and endurance with flexibility. Though he would never live to see the Union he fought so valiantly for, Lincoln’s steady guidance provided a framework for Americans to build peace upon long after his death.
Passionately Pursue Peace
It is always magnanimous to recant whatever we may have said in passion.
—Letter to William Butler; February 1, 1839
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
—Lincoln’s first Inaugural Address; March 4, 1861
Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can ... As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man.
—Fragment; written circa July 1850
Can we not come together, for the future? Let everyone who really believes, and is resolved, that free society is not, and shall not be, a failure, and who can conscientiously declare that in the past contest he has done only what he thought best —let everyone have charity to believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be bygones. Let past differences, as nothing be; and with steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old “central ideas” of the Republic.
—Speech at the Republican banquet in Chicago; December 10, 1856
Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
—Reply to Stephen Douglas; July 10, 1858
Forgiveness without Compromise
I have desired as sincerely as any man, I sometimes think more than any other man, that our present difficulties might be settled without the shedding of blood.
—Address to the Frontier Guard; April 26, 1861
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 by 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.
—Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address; March 4, 1865
I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
—Letter to Horace Greeley; August 22, 1862
The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am. None who would do more to preserve it. But it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly.
—Speech to the New Jersey General Assembly; February 21, 1861
I don’t want to quarrel with him—to call him a liar; but when I come square up to him I don’t know what else to call him if I must tell the truth out. I want to be at peace, and reserve all my fighting powers for necessary occasions. My time is now very nearly out, and I give up the trifle that is left to the Judge, to let him set my knees trembling again, if he can.
—Reply to Stephen Douglas; September 15, 1858
Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled, the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains, its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
—Message to Congress; July 4, 1861
There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary, upon which to divide.
—Message to Congress; December 1, 1862
(To be continued...)
This excerpt is taken from “Leadership Lessons of Abraham Lincoln: Apply the Principles of the Sixteenth President to Your Own Work and Life“ edited with introductions by Meg Distinti. To read other articles of this book, click here. To buy this book, click here.
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