Transcript

Abraham Lincoln | Matthew Holland | TEDxUVU

in addition to my day job I'm a professor of political science and in that role I regularly teach and write about the leadership and life and thought of Abraham Lincoln now you don't have to be a scholar to appreciate that Lincoln was a Visionary leader but I will say that in some of my recent research I've uncovered some evidence that Lincoln was far more Visionary than even his greatest admirers have known what I'm about to show you has never been published you're the first to see you're the first to see it here and what it reveals is simply incredible take a look who would have thought in 1865 that Lincoln would be so Visionary as to want to be associated with the fastest growing most dynamic institution of Higher Learning in the nation well on a more serious not what I wish to discuss with you this morning is what I think is the true genius and influence of Abraham Lincoln's moral imagination to do so I take you to a moment that's singular in our national history and perhaps world history one that took place exactly 150 years ago this last month but our discussion this morning is not meant to be just a cesa centennial celebration of the past it's brought forward this morning because I think it may be as relevant and needed as message as ever in the world in which we live today the moment I'm speaking about is Lincoln second inaugural address now I'm more than one of a few Scholars now that believe that Lincoln second inaugural was his best speech Lincoln himself said I expect this speech to wear as well perhaps better than anything I have ever produced he said that after delivering the Gettysburg Address I want to start with uh this picture of Lincoln um it's uh the only picture we have of him giving this all-important address it's hard to make out so there's a little green arrow here uh highlighting exactly where he's standing behind a spare Podium with all that I've said about how great the speech is I have to begin by noting the speech gets off to a strange start he basically says in this Gathering there's not a lot to talk about today this is going to be a short speech everything hinges upon the War I trust you know how the war is going as well as I do and that you're reasonably satisfied with the progress well this is a very strange way to start this speech because of the context of the war at that time as you can see from this map Grant was dug in on the south of Petersburg Heming in Lee who was at Richmond what this created was a trapping mechanism if you will Lee couldn't go east to the ocean he didn't have a Army he couldn't go north farther into Union forces the only thing he could do is try to get West and Grant was flanking him with Sherman and Sheridan marching up from the south what the whole country knew at that point is that the confederacy's best General and biggest army and Confederate Capital was in the clutches of Union forces and their hands the war was just about over and everybody knew it it was a cause for celebration and yet Lincoln doesn't say a word very very strange and unexpected in a political context well if the beginning is uh strange the ending is unprecedented but here again we have to appreciate the context in which Lincoln is speaking first of all we need to appreciate his own sense of loss and the responsibility he felt as the moment he came into his presidency he was elected in November of 1860 and by March of 1861 seven states seceded from the Union meaning before he's even come into office before he's made a single decision seven states said would rather be out of the Union than in it with you as president can you imagine the weight of that burden and then he begins the war and from day one he's constantly criticized about how the war is conducted and his role and his motivations in the war here just a few political cartoons from different papers South North European that highlight that constant level of criticism here he's painted out to be a vampire figure sucking the blood of the Pure Columbia the representation of America here's a shot of him uh from a kind of a European perspective in a game of cricket that this is all really just a game but a deadly game he's the personification of death wearing this cesarian wreath it's all about his own game of power and acquisition of power that's what the Civil War is about um he was criticized by Northern abolitionists uh this is a cartoon highlighting uh criticizing his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation something we consider today as one of the most noble breakthroughs in human history but for some he didn't go far enough and so it shows him with his foot on the Bible and that the constitution ripped up and his ink uh his pen dipped in the inkw well made out of a little satanic figure and these were from folks on the Northern side one of the most common images of him would be something like the following where he is there sort of betwix and between he's not so bad as as some of the rebelling South if you will that have the saan figure on their shoulder creating a rebellion but he's certainly not General Fremont who boldly uh freed the slaves in Missouri against Lincoln's own orders he's somewhere in the middle he's a vacillator he's trying to please everyone and he's not that attractive he's a cross between a sort of an imp and a baboon this is what he's picking up and reading in the papers on a regular basis then you add to this the P personal tragedy that he felt while he's in office his young son Willie contracts uh a very serious illness and on a night where he and his wife had to go to a social function uh they did so with a heavy heart came back and he was even sicker and died thereafter this was a great moment of loss for both of them and then especially for Mrs Lincoln who dresses in black for now weeks on end and refuses to be consoled and already ertic Behavior becomes even more erratic behavior in the midst of carrying all these burdens his home life was almost as difficult as this National Life and then there's the matter of the blood the Carnage here are some statistics cold from the US Department of Defense the official statistics from the war now what you'll see here is some numbers that may not compute because you've probably heard all your life that there were more people killed in the Civil War than all of our other major Wars put together doesn't appear to be the case here but that's because these are only the official statistics of the US Department of Defense it's only counting Northern soldiers who fought for the US government when you add in the Confederate loss and if you extend the analysis out of year to uh a year beyond the war and account for those folks who died from injury and disease uh incurred during battle that number goes to nearly a million or over a million Lincoln is standing there looking out into an audience where almost everyone would have been affected by this the loss of his father a son a brother and you can see you can physically see the toll that this takes on Lincoln himself this is a picture of Lincoln taken at the Cooper Union Address given just before he was elected president the shot I'm about to show you is taken just four years later the last known photo that we have of Lincoln in his presidency it looks like he has aged by 15 or 20 years it's only been four that's the linkoln that was standing at that Podium March 4th 1865 looking out to that audience now think what would you say in that moment if you're the leader all of that Bloodshed all of that Carnage and for what all over one of the ghastliest human practices we have ever known the practice of human slavery and now you're about to win and you're W and you're winning despite all of the criticism all of the personal loss what would you say well here's what Lincoln said with malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan and to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and Lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations now in my days as a professor of political science I've read a little bit of History I've read a little bit of politics I can find no precedent for this in human history now let me be clear there are priests and Prophets and popes who may have spoken like this but a president or a prime minister or a general in the middle of a s civil military conflict to stand up and say with malice toward none with charity for all it had never happened before in human history so the question before us is how did Lincoln arrive at such a profoundly magnanimous generous and unprecedented position the answer in a phrase moral imagination now to be clear by moral imagination I do not mean to suggest that Lincoln was simply this really creative clever guy who thought up his own sort of self-made morality that turned out to be a perfectly practical response to the situation the nation was facing even as we cannot help but be moved by that awe inspiring sense of care and forgiveness in that final statement we cannot miss that immediately following those statements of Charity he calls for firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right and pleads for the country to finish the work of finish the work we are in well the work they were in was the work of war between the time Lincoln gives his second inaugural and Lee surrenders to Grant at aomax thousands of more soldiers will die for Lincoln morality was not a play thing morality was grounded in truth and some truths at some moments have to be defended even unto death for all of his efforts to treat all of the parties with a remarkable degree of nonjudgmentalism which he does in that speech repeatedly in the final analysis there was a morally right and morally wrong question there was a morally wrong answer to the question of whether or not the country should be practicing human slavery so Lincoln's moral imagination begins with some non-negotiable principles he was not free to Simply adjust or dismissed according to his own preferences or circumstances and yet yet somehow Lincoln escaped something that was affecting almost the entire rest of the country north and south and that was a punishing sense of self-righteous certainty about who was good and who was bad for Lincoln moral truth was rooted in something higher something Transcendent something even Divine he was thinking uh this and he wasn't but he was alone unlike virtually any other Theologian or public intellectual of his day he exercised a tremendous amount of modesty about his own ability to Fathom exactly what that higher understanding was and what it's divine Source intended this by the way helps explain that strange start of the speech he could not predict the end of the war because it was not his War as lincol could only suppose given his limited Horizon and understanding this war appeared to be to him a punishment to the whole country both north and south for the sin of practicing or otherwise abetting the practice of slavery and so even if he couldn't say this for sure he surely could not predict when this war would be over with this we also get finally a glimpse of how he arrived at that unprecedented ending in the end what Lincoln did was imagine a breathtaking new tapestry of thought based not on some new fangled set of ideals of his own fashioning but on the most traditional political ethical and religious ideals of his day but plumbed to their very depth what Lincoln imagined was a world where Americans were deeply serious even deadly serious about the truth that all men are created equal at a minimum this required the hard sometimes brutal work of eliminating human slavery which was deep and entrenched in our country's practices along with this he imagined a world where Americans truly recognized they were humans imperfect Fallen mortal creatures standing before a God who knew more than they knew which dictated a great sense of humility and restraint in interpreting God's Will and judgment in the world and finally he imagined something that perhaps required the hardest work of all he imagined a world in which Americans did not just believe but actually practiced that longstanding doctrine that you must love every everyone including your enemies as yourself with this profound and ingenious blend of truths Lincoln gave the vision to a nation that would lift it up and out of its bloodiest conflict and most hateful War even as it firmly finished the work of that war of course the full healing power of Lincoln's words were cut short when his own life was cut short by a bullet fired in hatred but we still have his words today and they still beckon to us offering us wisdom and direction in these polarized times in the face of the increasingly intense debates about how we are to live with one another Lincoln would not ask anyone to surrender their determination to live according to to moral truth if anything he would call us to the difficult task of thinking as deeply as we can about the founding ideals of this country and what they demand and once we think we know what those ideals demand he would ask us to pursue them with malice toward none and with charity for all I cannot think of a more timely and needed message for our day thank you very much