"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"
About this Quote
Spoken at the Second Inaugural on March 4, 1865, as the Civil War neared its end, these words distill a vision of victory without vengeance. Lincoln calls the nation to renounce hatred toward former enemies and extend generosity universally, not as sentimentality but as a political ethic. Charity does not erase accountability; it reframes it. He pairs compassion with resolve, insisting on firmness in what is right while acknowledging human limits: as God gives us to see the right. That phrase tempers certainty with humility, admitting that moral vision is partial and borrowed, not owned. The balance is deliberate: mercy without moral drift, conviction without self-righteousness.
Finish the work we are in points to more than ending military conflict. The work includes the preservation of the Union and the irreversible defeat of slavery, secured by the Emancipation Proclamation and a transforming Constitution. It also anticipates the practical labors of reconstruction: restoring civil order, protecting freed people, rebuilding economies, and reconciling neighbors who had met on battlefields. Bind up the nation’s wounds turns political rupture into a shared human injury, inviting both North and South into the role of healer. In the address as a whole, Lincoln had framed the war as divine judgment for the national sin of slavery, spreading responsibility beyond sectional lines; charity flows from that theological humility.
Rhetorically, the sentence moves with biblical cadence and triadic balance: malice, charity, firmness. The moral center is paradoxical and bracing: forgive without forgetting the truth; pursue justice without indulging revenge. It is an ethic of reconstruction that seeks a just peace, not a punitive peace. Lincoln would not live to implement it, and the nation’s subsequent struggles show how hard that balance is to hold. Yet the sentence endures as a standard for public life after conflict: heal broadly, stand firmly, and let humility about the limits of our vision discipline the use of power.
Finish the work we are in points to more than ending military conflict. The work includes the preservation of the Union and the irreversible defeat of slavery, secured by the Emancipation Proclamation and a transforming Constitution. It also anticipates the practical labors of reconstruction: restoring civil order, protecting freed people, rebuilding economies, and reconciling neighbors who had met on battlefields. Bind up the nation’s wounds turns political rupture into a shared human injury, inviting both North and South into the role of healer. In the address as a whole, Lincoln had framed the war as divine judgment for the national sin of slavery, spreading responsibility beyond sectional lines; charity flows from that theological humility.
Rhetorically, the sentence moves with biblical cadence and triadic balance: malice, charity, firmness. The moral center is paradoxical and bracing: forgive without forgetting the truth; pursue justice without indulging revenge. It is an ethic of reconstruction that seeks a just peace, not a punitive peace. Lincoln would not live to implement it, and the nation’s subsequent struggles show how hard that balance is to hold. Yet the sentence endures as a standard for public life after conflict: heal broadly, stand firmly, and let humility about the limits of our vision discipline the use of power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
|---|---|
| Source | Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 — closing passage ("With malice toward none..."). |
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