Lincoln at Gettysburg, by Garry Wills

I enjoyed reading Garry Wills' "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America."

The book analyzes the rhetoric and context of the Gettysburg Address in a lot more words than the actual address includes.

While I have to believe Wills' analysis is spot on, I was most taken by two quotes from Lincoln on the subject of war:

Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he first be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensabe but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best cover the occasion.

~Abraham Lincoln, "Speeches and Writings," 2.523

I read this in context of finger-pointing over bad actors at recent protests, and thought this portion of the quote pertinent: "Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensabe but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best cover the occasion."

Bad guys are going to show up at protests and under that cover, do bad guy things. Those who were there to protest get blamed for the bad guys being there, doing bad things, "sullying" the protest, no matter how pure.

Then there's this:

When our own beloved Country, once, by the blessing of God united, prosperous and happy, is not afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand og God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy -- to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of law, order and peace, throughout the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of cirivl and religious liberty earned, under His guidance  and blessing by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence.

~Abraham Lincoln, "Speeches and Writings," 2.264

I can't imagine any president saying this today and not igniting a furore from those not religious, missing the mark in Lincoln's call for humility and repentance, ideals which certainly apply to those who believe in a Christian God or not.