Most Sundays, my family crosses the threshold of St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square to attend church. This little yellow parish across the street from the White House has stood since 1815. Each President since James Madison has visited there for services. More importantly to me, it is the church where I was married and where my son was baptized.
Like many old style Episcopal churches, St. John’s doesn’t have one central aisle – a fact that, as our rector is fond of mentioning, has perturbed many a bride over the years. There are two, one on the left, and one on the right. My wife and I have sat near the front on the right aisle for years now. Each time we move up that right aisle to our seats, we pass what has become known as the “Lincoln Pew.” President Lincoln, especially after the death of his son Willie in 1862, would quietly slip across Lafayette Square to attend evening services at my church. So as not to interrupt the service with his presence, he usually sat in the last pew on the right, and would leave a few minutes before the service ended. I have sat in the pew a few times, just to get a glimpse of the church from the point of view President Lincoln so often had. That is my closest tie to Lincoln and one I think of often – each time I pass that pew.
150 years ago today – March 4, 1861 – Lincoln stood a few miles away, up Pennsylvania Avenue and not so far from the White House and the little yellow church across the street. He stood on the east portico of the Capitol, the half finished great dome looming above the crowd, and took the oath of office as the 16th President of the United States. A crowd of 25,000 was in attendance to witness what some thought might be the last peaceful transfer of power in American history. The American experiment was hanging by a thread.
Lincoln had an impossible task before him, and his first inaugural speech eloquently attempted to accomplish that task. Almost begging the south to stop their march towards secession and war, he said: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
It was a futile effort, and even his eloquent words were not enough to keep the union from tearing itself apart. But through Lincoln’s steadfast and unwavering support of the Constitution and our Union of states, he held the nation together, won the war, gave birth to the modern Republican party, and left an indelible mark on the country he loved that still exists to this day.
I know that many of my fellow southerners still revile Lincoln, accuse him of barbarity, of trampling upon the Constitution, of waging total war on the south and being responsible for such devastation that even today the wounds of the war remain in some pockets of America. I used to feel this way when I was younger. But as I matured, and as I approached Mr. Lincoln with an open mind and a willingness to learn, I came to realize that he was one of the best political minds of his day, a man of integrity and wisdom, who had a vision for America and the strength and drive we needed at that most critical time in our history. He did what he had to do, what he must have done, to secure the blessings of liberty for all Americans and for our posterity. He has come to be, along with Washington and Theodore Roosevelt, one of my political heroes and I am proud that we in the Republican party can claim him as one of our own. I firmly believe that were he alive today, Mr. Lincoln would be as welcome in our Republican party as he was 150 years ago. I would certainly welcome his eloquence, his political savvy and his homespun good humor. It would be a refreshing change from the politics of today. But no one standing in that crowd so long ago knew that someday he would be ranked among our greatest presidents. They simply knew that he was a simple man from the frontier western state of Illinois and that his election had hardened the hearts of many of their countrymen for war.
March 4, 1861 marked the end of one chapter in American history and the beginning of another. Less than two months later, the nation would be embroiled in the most devastating conflict in our history. More Americans would die during the war between the states than in any of our other wars.
I hope that all of us take a few moments today to think about how far we as a nation and we as a united people have come since that bright, sunny Monday morning in March, 150 years ago today.
