When I watched the 2012 film, Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg, the words of president Lincoln from a scene with Thaddeus Stevens stroke me as some of the wisest words I have ever heard. They transformed the way I work with the truth and with wisdom.
Stevens argued that slavery should not survive the war and was very frustrated by the slowness of President Abraham Lincoln to support his position. Here is the scene.
“Thaddeus Stevens: The people elected me to represent them, to lead them, and I lead. You ought to try it.
Abraham Lincoln: I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I’d listened to you, I’d have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter. Then the border states would’ve gone over to the Confederacy, the war would’ve been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we’d be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.
Thaddeus Stevens: Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them, but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country’s infinite abundance with Negroes.
Abraham Lincoln: A compass, I learned when I was surveying, it’ll… it’ll point you true north from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp… what’s the use of knowing true north?”
President Lincoln’s powerful words illustrate the necessity of wisdom to guide even people who are armed with the truth to victory. You can know the truth and still lose unless you have the truth and wisdom to get you to your destination. And if you know the truth but because of lack of wisdom cannot get to your destination, what was the point in having the truth in the first place?
In the film, Lincoln’s words of wisdom appeared to have tutored representative Stevens, a brash, vociferous, and passionate advocate of racial equality just in time for the most crucial decision of his career.
As an aside, a lot of people don’t know this. President Lincoln was a republican president and it was a republican controlled house and senate that fought hard against democrats to pass the 13th amendment that abolished slavery in America and it’s territories. If you look at the situation today, you’d think it was the reverse. There is nothing that Democrats have ever done for African Americans that comes anywhere close to the amazing feat that republicans toiled for decades to pull off, at great risk. Let’s get back on track.
According to the film, On January 31, 1865, the Day the amendment passed in the house of representatives, the Democrats did everything to postpone the vote. At first, they managed to hold off the vote until the president should address democratic suspicions about peace delegates from the south who were sent to the capital for peace talks. Lincoln wisely dodged their trap and the vote was allowed to proceed. Next, the Democrats tried to block the amendment again by accusing republicans of trying to pass the amendment so that they would make blacks equal to whites. Democrats and a lot of people back then believed the races were created by God as unequal. Blacks should never be equal to whites. Hoping to kill the vote once and for all, they put representative Stevens on the spot, asking him to explain how he interpreted the clause from the declaration of independence that says “all men are created equal”. For 30 years Stevens had loudly proclaimed his position that he believed in full racial equality. But at that crucial moment, seeing the trap in front of him, heeding the wisdom of Lincoln, and knowing that if his answer was full racial equality the vote for the amendment would be killed, he chose an answer that would save the situation but which didn’t completely represent his believes. He said he only believed in the equality of all men under the law. That answer crushed Democratic efforts to prevent the vote.
That day, the amendment passed the house of representatives having earlier passed in the republican controlled senate and a republican president, Lincoln, welcomed it. Lincoln had personally fought to procure the amendment that would make his wartime emancipation proclamation continue for ever. He knew without the 13th amendment, at the end of the war, the Emancipation proclamation would lose its power and African Americans would be put back into slavery–legally. The was ratified in December that same year, 1865.
As I have observed and learned from life, I’ve seen myself and many other imprudent people crushed while clinging to the truth as hard as we could. Though dying, we had the truth in our heads, hearts, and hands. We had learned that the truth shall set us free. And we believed every word of it. We wonder, in despair, why can we be perishing even though we have the truth that should set us free?
The truth does set us free. Yet, it’s not enough to know the truth. In addition to the truth, we need wisdom to get us to our destination. Without wisdom, we might as well not bother to buy the truth.
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