"With malice toward none, with charity for all..."

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Abraham Lincoln

President Lincoln delivered these words in the state of the union address of 1865 at the end of a long and painful war that nearly tore our nation apart.

Many of us read those words in the context of this nation today and hearing words from a president today. Today our presidents seem remote - removed from our lives. National issues seem remote. In those days, the words were not remote. Fresh were the wounds. The war was not a remote thing that happened far away. It tore families apart. Nearly every family in our nation suffered some kind of loss.
On the Mason Dixon line the war was most personal and most painful. Some years ago I lived just north of Hagerstown, MD and sat for many hours on the front porch of a man who had heard first hand stories from the civil war. Charlie had known a woman who was 10 years old when confederate soldiers passed through on their way to Gettysburg. He relayed her story, his family story and the town's story as we shared the summer hours on the porch.
On the way to that famous battle, he said, they found his friends farm. When they left, she told him, there wasn't a thing left but a single egg that they had failed to find. But an interesting part of his story was that confederate scouts had preceded and had been killed by locals. He said they had actually been buried under the town tavern but after the war, monuments had been erected outside of town indicating a proper burial site but the bodies were not there. I saw those monuments many times. I asked why the monuments were made. He said they knew family would someday come looking for their kin. It was a matter of proper respect.
And then he explained a part of civil war history that I did not understand. His own family had been splintered by the war. Some chose to fight for the north and kept their last name starting with C. Others chose to fight for the south and changed their last name to start with G. It was the Mason Dixon line. With this story, I began to imagine this great war in much more personal terms. I saw a mother or grandmother with sons and grandsons on each side pointing muzzles at each other. I saw through the eyes of a 10 year old girl as her farm was pillaged. I saw through the eyes of a community that had done what they thought they should but knowing and understanding the pain of family in the aftermath of horror. I felt the words of Abraham Lincoln ""With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves.."
And in all of that I look at the battles I face today and I am humbled. Nothing - Nothing, I face today or have faced in my life comes close to the challenges faced at that time in history. And so I must strive in my small way to live ""With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves..." If they could, can't we?