Last Wednesday, we were to have Parmesan chicken for dinner, but Mary became so absorbed in the “Malice in Wonderland” coverage on television that we settled in the end, once again, on avocado sandwiches, the bedrock of our diet.
As Trump’s thugs vandalized the Capitol, hacking their way through windows and doors, and flooding in, it occurred to me that we ought to watch “Lincoln” that night, that night of all nights, as a way not only of shutting out for a couple of hours the mortifying mob in the nation’s capital, but also as a way of calling to mind a president who was honorable, intelligent, temperate, and humble — all the things this president un-elect is not. One oozing malice, one with malice toward none.
The film ends with Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) giving his Second Inaugural Address, his greatest speech, “a sacred effort,” said Frederick Douglass, when asked later at the Inauguration ceremony at the White House by Lincoln what he thought of it. That Douglass was even able to render his opinion was apparently owing to Lincoln’s intervention as Douglass was about to be ushered unceremoniously out of the East Room. “Here comes my friend Douglass,” the President said so everyone could hear, and, taking his hand, said, “I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?”
The above I have on the authority of Ronald C. White Jr.’s book, “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural.” In it also he quotes from a letter the beleaguered President wrote following the capture of New Orleans in the summer of 1862 which he ended by saying, “I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”
“The word ‘malice’ is seldom used today,” White writes. “Malice is not simply evil; it is directed evil, the intent to harm other people.”
Lincoln urged also that we have charity for all, though it is difficult when you have a President, whether by omission or commission, who seems intent on harming other people. The triumphalism you always expect from Trump was entirely missing from the Second Inaugural. Instead, Lincoln linked both North and South to the offense of slavery, and added that while it seemed “strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the seat of other men’s faces,” we should “judge not that we be not judged.”
“Let us strive on to finish the work we are in,” he concluded after just five to seven minutes . . . “to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Why was the speech so short, where were his plans and policies, where was the triumphalism and self-congratulation, many wondered, with the Union’s victory imminent. And here he was talking about love between enemies, asking his listeners and readers to “care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan. . . .”
Yes, Lincoln was a higher soul, and Daniel Day-Lewis so affectingly rendered him, reminding us what it is to be great on a day of such shame.