“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
One hundred and fifty years ago on March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered those momentous words during his second inaugural address. Five weeks later on April 9, 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant would meet at Appomattox Court House in Virginia to end the Civil War — the bloodiest conflict in this nation’s history — and to begin the important work of reuniting our broken country.
The terms of surrender granted to Lee were generous by intention. The president wished to demonstrate to the shattered Confederacy that its citizens had a rightful place in America’s renewal. The armies of the South were allowed to retain their guns, horses and other belongings so they might return to their homes and fields to begin the task of rebuilding that which was torn asunder in the battlefields of recent memory.
On Thursday, this sesquicentennial of the close of the Civil War, Lincoln’s immortal words of reconciliation and reconstruction will echo still, as America again struggles to ensure that the rights of all are respected and that our nation will forever remain a place of liberty and justice.
The National Park Service is calling on communities all across this great nation to mark that historic summit at Appomattox on Thursday by participating in the “Bells across the Land” commemoration. Churches, temples, schools, city halls, public buildings and historic shrines throughout the U.S. are invited to participate by ringing their bells at 3:15 p.m. EDT (2:15 p.m. CDT) as a way to renew our commitment to a truly United States of America.
It is wholly fitting that as we mark the 150th anniversary of the cessation of hostilities that brought an end to slavery we should ask all citizens to ring the bell of freedom so that we can reaffirm our nation’s commitment to upholding the highest standards of fairness, equality and opportunity under the law for all people.
For this message to resonate as clearly as it should, I believe it is incumbent upon radio, television, traditional and new media to join in this commemoration. Let the ringing bells serve as a clarion call from New York to Ferguson, from Los Angeles to Charlottesville, from Selma to Montgomery, that we must continue to bind up the nation’s historic wounds and consign the divisiveness we have witnessed in recent months to the waste bin of history.
Let us honor all the men and women who fought and died to preserve America, but in equal measure let us also celebrate the fact that for all of our differences, our government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Edward M. Burke is alderman of Chicago’s 14th Ward and chairman of the City Council Finance Committee.