Malice Toward None

A review of “Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln” by Edward Achorn

I’ve always loved Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. I could never exactly put words to it, but I’ll try to by the end of this post. When I had the opportunity to review Edward Achorn’s new book Every Drop of Blood, I knew it was about the Second Inauguration and I didn’t need to know anything else. I was in. But the truth is that this book soared beyond my highest hopes. It is for anyone who loves the Civil War, Lincoln, historical complexity, great speeches, or a host of other interests. It’s simply a great book, and one I will be talking about for a while to come.

Achorn’s book encompasses more than just Lincoln’s speech, which at first disappointed me. (I don’t know if I was expecting a 250-page analysis of a 700-something word speech or what.) But Every Drop of Blood is a master class in context building. Achorn provides a backdrop for so many different angles of Civil-War-era politics, culture, and people. It all revolves around the people present for the inauguration, and ultimately everything comes back to Lincoln. He sets the stage, so to speak, and then shows every facet of how the stage was constructed and prepared. I was floored with the depth at which Achorn provides a study of Samuel P. Chase (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who not only swore Lincoln in but recently had tried to run for President against him), the photographer Alexander Gardner, and of course John Wilkes Booth. On top of that, he does provide extensive analysis of the speech itself, but builds to that end and then does so in one succinct chapter. As the climax of the book, it works perfectly.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill presidential biography, as you’ve probably gathered, but it does span the breadth of Lincoln’s presidency and especially his thinking processes as they relate to the ideas submitted in the Second Inaugural. Achorn explores earlier speeches and national events from this point of view. A large portion of the book is also devoted to people who either hated Lincoln or at least didn’t think he was doing a good job leading the nation, especially because of the immense power he was granting to the executive (an affliction one could argue we have never recovered from). But Lincoln, throughout his years of service, speaks as if the events of the Civil War have controlled him instead of Lincoln’s plans coming to fruition.

“In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me,” Lincoln wrote. “Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation’s condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.”

This previews the ideas presented in the Second Inaugural about God’s plans being both above man’s and “good and righteous altogether”.

However, we also have to examine Lincoln’s positive contributions to those events. He did make significant changes to the power of the president and the makeup of the country during his presidency. The most complex example of this may be the Emancipation Proclamation, which could just as easily be interpreted as doing nothing or as being the largest contributor to the end of the war. Achorn writes:

Critics argued that the proclamation would have little meaning, since it would free people only in those places where the Union had no power to free them. But, as both Lincoln and his opponents realized, it would have a profound psychological impact, strengthening the Union cause and weakening the South. With the war clearly defined as a powerful moral crusade of freedom versus slavery, France and England could no longer consider lending aid to the Confederates. And word would spread through the Southern grapevine to African Americans that the president in faraway Washington, D.C., had declared they were free, inspiring many to abandon their masters, crippling the South’s ability to feed its people and sustain its armies. “It is my last card, and I will play it and may win the trick,” Lincoln said.

Put these two ideas together, and one can see that while Lincoln believed that events forced him into acting, he was still acting within those events for certain ends.

Alexander Gardner’s iconic photograph of Abraham Lincoln, aged and wrinkled from the War.

These ideas are ever-present in Lincoln’s speeches and recorded thoughts, and it culminates in that famous speech at his Second Inauguration. After over four years of war, Lincoln has had time to refine his message to the American people and presents it unencumbered. Lincoln has to believe that events are outside of his control and that the same is true of Southern leaders because he believes in a God who is sovereign over all events and that same God accomplishes his purposes. This comes from Lincoln’s strong Christian faith, a faith that I happen to share. (There is some question, Achorn points out, as it relates to Lincoln’s beliefs about Jesus, so we may differ more than I think. But our beliefs about God’s connection to human events are remarkably similar because the Bible is clear as can be about this paradox.) The most important and most thorough message, however, in both Lincoln’s speech and Every Drop of Blood, is that neither side is to blame for the war or slavery any more than the other. Lincoln made a remarkable statement in an 1854 speech that Achorn relates, saying:

“I think I have no prejudice against the southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up,” he said during a speech in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854. “When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we; I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.”

Wow! It takes a lot to say, in 1854, that one’s situation makes a huge difference in one’s moral values and choices. That is an idea that Philip Zimbardo received criticism for promoting in the 1970s with the discussion of his Stanford Prison Experiment. I can’t imagine the reception it had in Lincoln’s time. But it goes to show the depth at which Lincoln valued the union and those in it, particularly the South. Lincoln valued the Union so much that he was unwilling to acknowledge that it had already been broken. One can see this unwillingness in Achorn’s explanation of one specific word in the Second Inaugural speech:

“One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it,” Lincoln said. “These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.” Going over his printed speech one last time, choosing every word with the utmost care, Lincoln had crossed out the word “half” in “southern half” and scrawled above it “part.” Perhaps he wished to emphasize that equal sides were not at war with each other; only insurgents against the government. In fact, nowhere in the speech did Lincoln identify the South as the enemy. This speech was not about blaming one side or the other.

Once again, Lincoln is refraining from assigning blame. And there’s a good reason for this. Lincoln had insider knowledge (he was the president after all) that the end of the war was coming more quickly than others might have guessed. Yet he did not allude to that in his speech. Instead, he said what he seems to have believed for his entire life, that the North and South are not different kinds of people, that neither is necessarily to blame. The hope here, I and Achorn both believe, is that Lincoln’s speech can be an olive branch to the South to kickstart reconstruction.

But don’t think for a second that Lincoln is saying there is no moral right in this war. Lincoln, of course, tries to be in the moral right, but he realizes that God must have bigger plans than either side by themselves. His evidence? The war continues. God would stop it if his plans had been accomplished. Achorn relays Lincoln’s words and evaluates how unconventional Lincoln’s thinking was to a politician at that time:

“Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away,” he said. “Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” He was quoting here the Nineteenth Psalm, which calls on fallen man to humbly accept the will of the Almighty as beyond human understanding. What Lincoln was saying was astonishing. For the first time, an American president in an inaugural address was denouncing slavery as an unmitigated evil, speculating that God himself had rendered that judgment on it by punishing all Americans through this disastrous war.

Maybe that’s why I love Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. It combines truth and paradox, simplicity with nuance, it is written in a form that is accessible to the people and yet has so many high-minded ideas. Achorn brings that across perfectly and does so with amazing historical context and analysis of Lincoln’s ideas. The question of whether reconstruction would have been different under President Lincoln hangs over the entire text and becomes apparent in the epilogue. And that is also why I find Lincoln so interesting. The questions left behind by his assassination still echo into today. Every Drop of Blood investigates it as well as any other book I have found, and I have to recommend it to anyone who likes historical narratives.

For a full text of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, click here.

I received an eARC of Every Drop of Blood courtesy of Public Affairs and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.