This Too Shall Pass

It had been a long day and we were getting a little edgy.  I had to laugh, though, when I saw my ten-year-old son had taped a sign on his shirt that read: 

“Danger, Tired Kid!!!”

I thought that was a pretty good idea, to broadcast a warning when you’re feeling irritable.  Such a caution could work both ways:  to advise others to tread lightly, and to counsel yourself to think before you act.  Then again, humor goes a long way in easing tension.

The danger sign disappeared from my son’s T-shirt by the next morning.  Storms eventually pass, often leaving behind an overarching rainbow.  This heavenly light appears after the air is cleared by a storm.  If, however, violent winds stir up more debris than the rain washes away, then the iridescent colors cannot follow—not in the air, not in the soul.  This tempering of the tempest is aided by thinking before you act.

Often, allowing passions to cool resolves the issue that created the squall. The storm blows over.  [For reasons I won’t mention, I wish I would have thought of this last week.] 

A year before Abraham Lincoln was elected President, he gave a speech which he concluded with the following story:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations.  They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.”  How much it expresses!  How chastening in the hour of pride!  How consoling in the depths of affliction!

When life has you in turmoil, let it pass.  And if it helps, tape a sign to your shirt cautioning people to beware your stormy mood.

Abraham Lincoln

(1809 – 1865)

Lincoln is famous for his speeches, his humor, his magnanimity and his diplomacy. 

·         Through his speeches, he gave people a vision—“That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

·         Through his humor he created a bond of trust and broke down walls.

·         Through his magnanimity, he used commendation (attributing the best motives to his opponents) rather than confrontation, to point out the similarities between his aims and those of his detractors.

·         Through his diplomacy he emancipated the slaves and held the United States together.

I’d like to take a closer look at the last point: diplomacy.  In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won his party’s convention—but not until the third round of voting.  He recognized both the strength of his Republican opponents and his personal lack of experience in the White House, so he filled his cabinet with strong leaders within his party.  These men were highly experienced—enough experienced, in fact, to think they could run things better than he could.  Lincoln used diplomacy to earn their respect and keep them all working together during our nation’s most fiery crisis.

Lincoln achieved similar diplomatic success in keeping the slave states bordering the Union from seceding.  These border states were critical to the Union’s  success.  Washington D.C. would have been in the middle of hostile territory without Maryland; the South would have owned the crucial artery of the Ohio River if Kentucky were on its side.  All during the war, Lincoln had to find a delicate balance between appeasing the abolitionists of the North and the slaveholders of the border states. 

One of Lincoln's most frustrating challenges was finding a general for the Union Army who could fight a winning campaign.  His first choice, McClellan, had everything going for him with one drawback.  He didn’t want to fight.  Lincoln studied war strategy and gave McClellan, and his other generals, a lot of good advice.  Often his advice was ignored and then Lincoln would have to take the heat.  Lincoln wrote many letters with rebukes, none of which were sent to their intended recipients.  Writing the letters was enough to vent his frustrations so he didn’t have to harm his working relationships.  What he did send were letters that diplomatically expressed his concerns and requests.

As the Civil War drew to a close, instead of self-congratulations, Lincoln asked for an honest self-analysis of both sides.  He issued a call for healing and reconciliation "With malice toward none, with charity for all."  

Lincoln closed his “This too shall pass” speech with this wish:

               

Let us hope . . . that by the best cultivation of the physical world,
beneath and around us;

and the intellectual and moral world within us,

we shall secure . . . happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward,

and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

Sources:

Abraham Lincoln, Speech before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, September 30, 1859. http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/fair.htm

A. Lincoln by Ronald C. White, 2010.
The following works by James McPherson:  Abraham Lincoln; Tried by War:  Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief;
                 Battle Cry of Freedom.
Abraham Lincoln by Wilbur F. Gordy, 1917.
If you can tell, I have a passion for learning about Lincoln and the Civil War.