Thanksgiving Proclamation

[Farm Boy]

Translate it forward at hear what he was saying instead of reading it like an anachronism. People weren't dumb, they could read between the lines to the message. The sins of slavery are secular sins as well, and the judgment of God and the payment of blood owed for longstanding complicity in the deed require no buy-in from specific Abrahamic values to come across as one hundred percent valid. The country was cursed by its own actions and was about to reap what it had sown. Don't get the message lost in the language.

 

[onejayhawk]

Lincoln was a great man for the time but by modern standards that second inauguration speech of his is pure religiois fanaticism and resembles what we might expect to hear from a leader of al Qaeda or something. The whole notion that war is the instrument of God's will and that sins must be paid for in blood is pretty scary to say the least.

There is nothing fanatical about the speech. It's about reconciliation after conflict. Eg:

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.​

The concluding paragraph, quoted above, emphasizes the importance of right over malice. It is a pity he would not live to see the reconstruction. His stature may have blunted the worst abuses.

J

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Translate it forward at hear what he was saying instead of reading it like an anachronism. People weren't dumb, they could read between the lines to the message. The sins of slavery are secular sins as well, and the judgment of God and the payment of blood owed for longstanding complicity in the deed require no buy-in from specific Abrahamic values to come across as one hundred percent valid. The country was cursed by its own actions and was about to reap what it had sown. Don't get the message lost in the language.

Well said. I took a cheap shot, but it's a great speech.