March 4, 1865.

The North American slave autocracy was in its death throes when the 16th president of the United States stepped forward, raised his hand and swore the 35-word oath that Washington, Adams and Jefferson had taken. He was the commander in chief of the world’s largest, most sophisticated, mechanized, deadly military. The United States was on the edge of putting down the rebellion that had begun on April 12, 1861 when South Carolina seceded and fired on Fort Sumter. No one is really sure how many were killed in a nation of 34 million people. Some historians have revised the number of deaths upward to more than 750,000. It was America’s deadliest war, and it left the southern states destroyed, destitute and impoverished.

Let us contemplate Abraham Lincoln’s words against the trashy imbecility of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the anti-semitic conspiracy loon and Donald Trump’s front runner for the 2024 vice presidential nomination. She has called for secession and a “national divorce” to “separate by red and blue states.” She is every bit the insurgent agent that Lincoln spoke about as he reflected back towards the beginning of the great Civil War.

Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 @mtgreenee

We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are… https://t.co/Azn8YF1UUy

Here is what Lincoln said at his second inauguration:

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 avert 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 without war ~ seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

Lincoln talked about the cause of the war, which was slavery:

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 even 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 with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Lincoln acknowledged the reality that both sides prayed to the same god. Instead of judging with repugnance, Lincoln spoke with humility — lest he be judged — though he observed the great moral difference between the positions of the two sides:

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 prayers 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 offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses 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 offense came shall we discern therein 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.

What came next is the greatest statement of moral resolve in American history, followed by the most important words of reconciliation in American history. They are spine-chilling:

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Shame on you, Marjorie Taylor Greene

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