He was our greatest President, the transcendent figure of the 19th century, perhaps the greatest American of us all. When he came to office secession was underway and his opponents had sworn and prepared armed revolution against him. If any leader ever had cause to excoriate his foes and threaten bloody retribution, it was he. What, then, did he say?
He offered not bluster and insults but a clear statement of his intentions and beliefs. He would enforce the laws and the Constitution as they were, evenhandedly. He held that the Union was perpetual and unbroken, so he would see the laws under the Constitution faithfully executed in all the states. He questioned the wisdom of secession and war but he chose to close not with a threat but with a plea for calm deliberation, intelligence, patriotism, and faith. This he saw as the best path to peace and freedom.
When I was young we saw the forces of a reactionary society unleash its own violence at too many lunch counters and too many churches; at a bridge in Selma and on the streets of Chicago. Fury at racial discrimination and an unjust war led some past protest and into violence. Our best leaders decried the violence of the left and the right (though rarely in equal measure) and in time they began to hear and to change. By the force of the peoples' political will some rights were gained, some injustices remedied, and one war ended. I believed we had passed through the fire and would be a better nation.
Today I see too many politicians and too many Americans again take the course of reactionary anger, demeaning and slandering their opponents with taunts suffused with the language of threat and violence. They toy with passions that they fear too little. I embrace the ideas they oppose, and I fear the violence that they so casually risk unleashing.
Yet my greater fear was that our President and the leaders of the majority would fail in their response to this reactionary anger. They retreated in the face of bluster, as if by abandoning their duty and their principles they might escape the wrath of the minority. Now I feel more hopeful. The majority has once again fulfilled its duty to govern according to its mandate.
It is tempting to talk of political revenge, to demean the leaders of the opposition. I hope, though, that our President heeds the words the predecessor he so admires. I hope he can lead us all to a more perfect union, through appeals to the better angels of our nature.