Reconciliation requires compromise

Have we forgotten how?

One hundred fifty-nine years ago today, Abraham Lincoln was an unpopular president unlikely to succeed at reelection in 1864 because he singlemindedly pursued a war to prevent southerners from seceding from the Union. Fourteen months earlier the most deadly day on U.S. soil occurred at Antietam where 23,000 men died or suffered profound wounds as citizens of the same nation as of 1860 continued a civil war. In the spring and summer of 1863, a drawn out siege in the west along the Mississippi River broke Vicksburg’s Confederate resistance coincident with another massive battle in a small Pennsylvania crossroads called Gettysburg.

Lincoln’s trip to the site of this latter horror supported the dedication of a national cemetary to honour the thousands who died there. Lore is that the president was an after thought as a speaker, to deliver a few words, certainly not the main draw, Edward Everett, for those who attended.

Lincoln obviously took the invitation quite literally as his remarks ran only 247 words. Delivered on a field where so many perished merely four and a half months before, Lincoln honoured those who gave the ultimate price to protect the nation wracked by conflict. More enduring, however, he implored the nation to embrace ‘a new birth of freedom’ under government of the people, by the people, and for the people to endure.

Embedded in this brief speech, Lincoln urged all to reconcile themselves to compromises which will be essential to achieve his objective. ‘It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that this nation shall have a new birh of freedom….’ Having begun his remarks by reminding those assembled that the Founders had created a new nation, Lincoln closed that it would take much to bind this nation back together. But he saw that reconciliation as imperataive.

We have not entirely succeeded in creating a nation where all feel they have an equal stake or voice. The contemporary political anger plaguing the United States for fully a generation, if not substantially longer, illustrates the fractured politics that some use to advocate for another civil war. I wonder if they have been to Gettysburg or Antietam or Petersburg? Those were ugly battles with massive death counts and horrible maiming which 19th century medicine could do little to ameliorate.

The raw divisions which characterised the civil war endure in many places, apparently, as tension about who and how and what to do with this nation’s future continues. Lots of shouting at the other side but not much conversing across the divide.

Lincoln’s remarks, however, in 1863 reminded the nation that the citizens alone had the power to save and sustain that more perfect union governed by the people and for the people. Lincoln never distinguished between Union or Confederate citizens and I doubt he would have talked of Republicans or Democrats in 2022. He never used the word compromise but he talked about the objective and what it would offer the nation by achieving it. As part of that national struggle, Lincoln himself died less than eighteen months later at the hands of an assassin.

We would do well to recall Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg. We have worked towards that more perfect union over the past two and a half centuries, albeit with fits and starts but we could lose it in a heartbeat as we saw too recently for comfort. Many overseas are baffled by how focused we are on the negatives, the divisions, and the broken aspects of this country compared with what one sees elsewhere.

Take a moment to reread Lincoln’s words.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”Abraham Lincoln, "The Gettysburg Address', 19 November 1863.

We cannot retain the exquisite good we do have in this country if we underappreciate what it is. Our greatest threat right now is our own apathy towards recognising who and what we are as we share, focusing instead on differences which are important but resolvable if we make an effort. The cost if we lose this is incalcuable. FIN