Words from a Great Heart
Let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light that I have.
With malice towards 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,—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
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 cords 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 they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature.
—Abraham Lincoln.
Alternate Reading: Acts 17:16-31.