Lincoln.2012 -

Lincoln’s genius lay not in inflexible ideology but in strategic patience. He tolerated incompetent generals until he found Ulysses S. Grant, who would fight. He issued the Proclamation as a war measure, using his constitutional power as commander-in-chief. He endured vicious criticism from abolitionists who thought him too slow and from conservatives who thought him too radical. Through it all, he held to a single star: the Union must be preserved. But he came to see that a Union half-slave and half-free could not stand—not just politically, but morally.

His entry into national politics coincided with the nation’s most explosive issue: slavery. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed new territories to decide the slavery question locally, shattered the fragile Missouri Compromise. Lincoln, a little-known Illinois lawyer, re-entered politics with a fury born of moral conviction. He did not argue for racial equality in modern terms—he was a man of his century—but he insisted that slavery was a “monstrous injustice” and a violation of the Declaration’s promise that all men are created equal. His 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas elevated him to national prominence, even in defeat. When he won the presidency in 1860, seven Southern states seceded before he even took the oath. lincoln.2012

In 1864, facing certain defeat for re-election, he refused to abandon the war. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September turned the tide, and Lincoln won a decisive victory. His second inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1865, with the war’s end in sight, is a masterpiece of theological and political reflection. “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” he urged a nation to bind its wounds. It was not the rhetoric of a victor, but of a healer. Weeks later, on April 14, he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre, just days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Lincoln’s genius lay not in inflexible ideology but