I read two articles this week, one having to do with Japan, the
other with the issue of reparations in the U.S., which to me tied
into America”s ability to apologize vs. Japan”s seeming inability
to do the same, and in the case of America, specifically, as
enumerated in Lincoln”s 2nd Inaugural Address.
For years now, I have written on the situation in Japan, including
this year”s hot-button issue of the school textbook, which most
would say whitewashes Japan”s role in World War II, as well as
the occupation of Korea prior to that time. As Fareed Zakaria
writes in the August 27 issue of Newsweek:
“Rather than confronting its past, the Japanese government has
tried simply to get beyond it. It apologizes, stays resolutely
peaceful, but has never given a full accounting of its role in
World War II. The result is national schizophrenia.”
Separately, Eric Rauchway has a piece in the August 20 edition
of the Financial Times, discussing the rapidly emerging issue of
reparations to African Americans for past injustices. We”re not
going to touch that issue here, except to say that Rauchway uses
Lincoln”s 2nd Inaugural as an example of how a nation should
apologize for past misdeeds. So I”ve decided to connect the dots,
and while neither Zakaria or Rauchway hold up Lincoln as a role
model for Japan, I will.
March 4, 1865 / Abraham Lincoln”s 2nd Inaugural Address
[The Civil War is winding down and it”s quite apparent the North
will prevail.]
Fellow-countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of
the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended
address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat
in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and
proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public
declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and
phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and
engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be
presented.
…On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All
dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving
the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking
to destroy it with war – seeking to dissolve the Union and divide
the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one
of them would make war rather than let it perish, and the war
came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves,
not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the
Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this
interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the
Union by war, while the government claimed no right to do more
than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
of the conflict might cease when, or even before the conflict
itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a
result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same
Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against
the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a
just God”s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of
other men”s faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged.
The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has
been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe
unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that
offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence
cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of
those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs
come, but which having continued through His appointed time,
He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and
South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the
offence came, shall we discern there any departure from those
divine attributes which the believers in a living God always
ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman”s
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and
until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years
ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are
true and righteous altogether.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right as God gives us to see the right, let us 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 orphans, to
do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations.
—–
Brian Trumbore
