At the same time, religion has been one of the great forces for reform and liberty in the country. unless you do it with an immense amount of humility, that becomes a stumbling block within a democratic context in a way that is very, very troubling. And if you claim divine sanction for what you want to do, that makes compromise very difficult. people do claim divine sanction for what they want to do. What is perennially frightening is that in American politics, in American culture. On how that compares with the role of religion in American politics now: So religion was both a rallying cry - it provided a predicate for the north, for the anti-slavery forces - and let us be very clear, and this is resonant today: It also provided an intellectual prop to slave owners who wanted to believe that slavery was divinely ordained. It's a remarkable thing for an American president to say.
one of the great pieces of writing ever in the history of the English language, what does Lincoln say? Lincoln says that the Civil War came because of slavery and because slavery was a sin, and that God himself seemed to be adjudicating the weight of that sin in real time. The religious imagery and points of reference suffused the American experience then in a way that was so striking that in the second inaugural. On how people mixed religion and politics then: Politics Democracy, are you OK? What recent history tells us about the state of politics (The only emancipatory measure in the country at the time was the Emancipation Proclamation, a wartime measure that had not yet been codified in the Constitution). Henry Raymond, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, came to the White House in August to urge Lincoln to change his stance to improve his odds of reelection. He could have chosen not to fortify and fight over Fort Sumter.Īnd, as the 1864 election loomed, he could have given in to demands to withdraw emancipation as a precondition for peace talks with the Confederacy. If he had solely been a cynical political creature, he would have made radically different decisions at critical points."įor example, Lincoln could have decided not to vocally oppose a compromise in the winter of 1860 that would have preserved slavery, arguably for decades, Meacham says. "Lincoln was a politician, but he was a politician who ultimately was driven by conscience," Meacham says.
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