Transcript of President Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865)
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to achieve and cherish a lasting peace among ourselves and with the world. to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with the world. all nations.
A. Lincoln
April 10, 1865
It seems we are deeply divided nations. Polls have never been more wrong about the presidential election. I think many people who depend on polls have never administered one or attempted to collect one on the telephone. I have spent nearly 20 years of my life calling people on the phone and attempting to get them to finish a poll. The one thing I have learned is rednecks, like me, do not answer polls on the phone.
I have often wondered what it is about Donald Trump is that makes my people so attracted to him. It is a hope that things can be better. Over the years more of the same has not worked. The politicians have failed us and the same people who design the polls seek to slice and dice up into neat little packages to sell us than to their politician friends.
155 years ago we were a deeply divided nation, moving towards the conclusion of a real civil war. Shortly after speaking these words, the president would be martyred. He would offer his life for his country at Ford's Theater.
As a young Mormon missionary, I have walked the civil war battlefield of Vicksburg Mississippi. I have seen the monuments from a real civil war. I also refused to walk the streets of the colored children of that war. A war that cost so many lives to free their grandfathers.
I knew the people of my church did not want me to convert poor African Americans. We had a word for them. We called them das rights. This out of the mistaken belief that no matter what you ask them they would respond, Das Right, I believe dat too. We heard of the missionaries who came to town, converted a whole lot of people, and left them to promptly go inactive when we transferred to a new area. We wanted to convert that Golden Family. Translate this to rich middle-class white people who would then pay to tithe and serve in the church. Then to be the Sunday School Teachers, Primary Teachers and Bishops and Stake Presidents.
How long will we continue to fight this war? If I had it all to do again would I walk the streets of the projects?
I have family members who adopted colored children and I have seen the struggles they have endured to be accepted by both worlds. they were not wanted by the members of their race because they had a white mother and father and not accepted by the members of my church because of the color of their skin.
I don't have any answers, only question, as I struggle to deal with my prejudices.
"Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!"
Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a Dream.
Can this dream be fulfilled while I still refuse to serve in the projects among his people?
King David was a man after God's own heart not because he was sinless but because he sought to change.
I ask myself, Can I then change
and be the change I desire in the world?
