"Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address is a dense, technical affair. Delivered in March 1861, before the outbreak of the Civil War but after seven states had left the Union, it could hardly have been the occasion for much else. After a long treatise on the illegality of secession, Lincoln closed with a single flourish. His plea to the "better angels of our nature" is so familiar that we can miss the very particular intercession he imagines."
"The better angels will touch "the mystic chords of memory" reaching "from every battle-field, and patriot grave" into the hearts of all Americans and "yet swell the chorus of the union." It is a complex, orchestral vision: angels as musicians, shared past as instrument, the nation itself stirred back into tune. We can still hear in Lincoln's final, lyrical turn something of what the American Revolution sounded like in his head: transcendent and alive."
Abraham Lincoln framed secession as illegal and concluded his first inaugural with an appeal to shared memory and moral sentiment. He imagined the "better angels" touching "the mystic chords of memory" that bind Americans through Revolutionary sacrifices, restoring the union. He believed many Americans deeply venerated the Revolutionary past, having absorbed its stories, rituals, and reverence for the founders. He positioned himself as the Revolution's protector against Confederate claims to its legacy, seeing civil war as unavoidable. Approaching the 250th anniversary of 1776, Revolutionary memory has weakened, polarized into caricatures, and become combustible fuel for contemporary culture-war conflicts.
Read at The Atlantic
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