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Litigation Journal

Summer 2024

How to Write in Stone

Michael Doyen

Summary

  •  The president-elect—and, even more fervently, Seward—hoped to avoid war. 
  • Lincoln sent Seward a final draft of his inaugural address.
  • The successive refinements of two masters provide a rare opportunity to witness the power of collaboration.
How to Write in Stone
Bruce Yuanyue Bi via Getty Images

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“With you, and not with me, is the solemn question of ‘Shall it be peace or a sword?’”

Abraham Lincoln penned these words as the last line of his First Inaugural. His chosen secretary of state, William Seward, convinced that he, and not this bumpkin from Illinois, should be president, struck it. Too bellicose, more likely to lead to war than peace.

Out of these tensions grew one of the greatest speeches, and one of the greatest partnerships, in American political history. Lincoln listened to Seward’s lecturing—and took his revisions and refined them. The results of their collaboration first failed and then endured, carved into marble around the ceiling of the Lincoln Memorial.

Several years ago, in a circle of friends congratulating a just-concluded speaker, one of them said, “Nice job delivering Mike’s speech.” It seemed a sour and wrong note. Yes, I had had a hand in the speech, but the attribution mistook both speaker and collaborator. With Lincoln and Seward, we get a chance to give both their due.

When Lincoln arrived in Washington, in March 1861, seven states had already seceded. The president-elect—and, even more fervently, Seward—hoped to avoid war. Lincoln sent Seward a final draft of his inaugural address. Their handwritten revisions survive, a national treasure. The successive refinements of two masters, word by word and line by line, provide a rare opportunity to witness the making of public poetry and the power of collaboration.

Lincoln closed his draft in now-famous terms:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you, unless you first assail it. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend” it. You can forbear the assault; I can not shrink from the defense. With you, and not with me, is the solemn question of “Shall it be peace, or a sword?”

Seward thought this repetitive to the point of belligerence. He struck “unless you first assail it” and the final challenge: peace or sword. Lincoln had already made this it’s-you-not-me point, and it was not the note to end on. Serial provocation—pointing again and again to a line in the sand—would goad the other side to cross.

Lincoln saw the sense in that and took it aboard and then went further, striking the previous sentence as well, “You can forbear the assault, I cannot shrink from the defense.” He had already said that too. He knew repetition had its place, but Seward was right—this was not the place.

In a formally respectful, but pedantic, cover note, Seward had explained his view: Seven states had already seceded; if the speech was too harsh, more would follow and war would come. The speech needed to be softer and should end on a note of affection.

To illustrate his point, Seward sketched an entirely new closing, an extended metaphor about the chords that tied the country together and would again harmonize. It was not yet a thing of beauty, but it captured and organized the key ideas that would animate a passage now regarded as among the finest in American political discourse. His note to Lincoln shows he wrote as he thought, striking and rewriting words and passages on the fly. In that crude condition, he sent the draft to Lincoln:

I close. We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but countrymen fellow countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly they must not be broken they will not, I am sure they will not be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from every ba so many battle fields and patriot so many patriot graves bind pass through all the hearts and hearths all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet harmon again harmonize in their ancient music when touched as they surely breathed upon again by the better angel guardian angel of the nation.

None of this was quite right, and none of it was in Lincoln’s voice. But he resisted the urge to strike it. Great speeches and powerful metaphors don’t spring into existence like Athena fully formed. One of Lincoln’s great gifts was to see past the flaws and distill what remained. Hope and pride animated Seward at this juncture. Lincoln ignored the pride and distilled the hope.

“I Close”

Seward was famously formal. If he was going to close his speech, he would announce it. That wasn’t Lincoln’s way. He saw the virtue in telling the audience, Here’s the point, listen up. But Lincoln wanted to do more. He brought to Seward’s signpost the discipline of a great poet and a great lawyer: to make every word and phrase count.

With a small stroke, he made my favorite revision, turning “I close” into “I am loath to close.” In two words, he said, If talking could hold off war, I would talk for all eternity; I wish I could. He followed here two maxims: Speak the truth, and speak from the heart.

“Aliens or Enemies”

Seward starts with an echo of Jefferson facing threats of dissolution threescore years earlier: “We are all Federalists; we are all Republicans.” Now:

We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but countrymen fellow countrymen and brethren.

The idea is pedigreed and powerful, but Seward falls prey to a lawyerly habit: If uncertain of the noun, add more nouns: aliens and enemies, countrymen and brethren. The contrast between the terms is not sharp, and it is further diffused by the doubling.

Lincoln did not want two words where one would do; the trick was to find the right word. He thought “aliens” wrong and “enemies” right, but the opposite of “enemies” was neither “countrymen” nor “brethren.” The opposite of enemy is friend. Lincoln also saw that combining the statement of fact with the moral admonition (“we are not, must not”) flattened both ideas. Both merited full expression: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” Brevity and repetition of form make poetry.

“Too Hardly”

Seward comes to his great main point—the bonds of affection—but the phrasing is clunky:

Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly they must not be broken they will not, I am sure they will not be broken.

At first glance, Lincoln’s revisions look like they serve only brevity:

AlThough passion has may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection too hardly they must not, I am sure they will not be broken.

Brevity is good, and a Lincoln hallmark, but his changes here are more subtle. Seward declares that passions have strained affections. Lincoln takes a less critical tone: Passion may have strained the bonds of affection. Whether they have or not—that is not the important thing. The important thing is what we choose to do now.

For his call to action, Seward offers, condescendingly, a simultaneously confident and dubious view: “I am sure,” he says, that passions will not break the bonds of affection. Lincoln doesn’t announce what will happen; he implores: Passions must not break our bonds of affection.

These small changes make the difference between reproach and compassion, between accusation and aspiration. That is the virtue of Lincoln’s looking beyond the particular phrases and finding Seward’s goals: Lincoln gave those goals expression in ways Seward hadn’t seen.

“Mystic Chords”

Seward finishes with his extended metaphor, insightful but ungainly:

The mystic chords which proceeding from every ba so many battle fields and patriot so many patriot graves bind pass through all the hearts and hearths all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet harmon again harmonize in their ancient music when touched as they surely breathed upon again by the better angel guardian angel of the nation.

A lesser poet would have rejected this in its entirety, as overly labored and underachieved. Lincoln studied it, adjusted every facet, and gave it form and power.

Lincoln liked “mystic chords,” but mystic chords of what? Chords of music? And why ancient music? Chords might harmonize, but how did they “proceed”?

By making these chords of memory, Lincoln gives vividness to the metaphor, both in imagery and in meaning. Chords of memory, like ties that bind, don’t “proceed”; they “stretch” from battlefield to heart to hearth.

And taut chords can ring. “Harmonize” sounds like a good resolution for discord, but it’s mild and slightly effete—not the popular crescendo Lincoln wants. “Ancient” music seems too far from daily experience. Lincoln retains the musical sense but invokes the ordinary power of Sunday congregations in song: The chords of memory, stretched across the land, will “swell the chorus of the Union” when we gather again, as surely we will.

Lincoln also notices phrases Seward had written and then stricken: Whatever Seward meant by chords, “breathed upon” is hard to picture: Angels breathe upon chords? But we can imagine that chords stretched taut will ring, when, as Seward first wrote, they are touched.

When Seward looked for the force that would bring harmony, he first thought of a “better angel,” but then struck that in favor of the “guardian angel of the nation.” This was ecumenical, avoiding the invocation of any particular God, but not compelling. In reaching out to his dissatisfied countrymen, Lincoln wanted to appeal to something inside each of us, the compassion in every heart—the better angels of our nature. In going with Seward’s first thought, Lincoln made this final appeal vivid and personal, calling on the good in every listener.

Lincoln’s final distillation survives in his hand, at the end of the printed text:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Both men contributed form and substance. Whose closing is it? Lincoln’s, without doubt. Whose artistry is it? Lincoln’s and Seward’s. Lincoln brings beauty with his final strokes, resolving the tensions between diplomacy and statesmanship; but Seward contributes by pushing his instinct—different than Lincoln’s—and articulating and illustrating it so clearly. He gave Lincoln what any public artist longs to get—something great to work with. Leonardo could achieve greatness working alone for years on unfinished masterpieces. Leaders and lawyers seldom have the luxury of time. Lincoln didn’t have to spin gold from straw; he spun finely crafted gold from gold. Seward came to understand he served a great leader, and in time the two were so closely aligned that one terrible night assassins attacked them both. Seward awoke only to learn he must mourn the death of a great friend.

For the inaugural, all this talent and effort failed in its stated goal. Shots rang out at Fort Sumter. The nation split; war came. And yet, the speech has endured, continuing to counsel commitment and affection in every riven generation, down to our own.

Lincoln understood that manner of speech—and manner of fighting—matters not only to the course of war but also to the long aftermath of war. In war and in litigation, as impossible as it sometimes seems, it is always better if affection is only strained, not broken. Fighting will end; the world will revert and we will need again the better angels of our nature. Words matter, and when it comes to putting them together, two heads are better than one.

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