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; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
That is my prayer.
Something resembling peace came as I wrote.
7 a.m.
Office
A lieutenant visited my office one afternoon last week, a thin ghost of a man. Sitting in a chair alongside my desk, he seemed to totter, to lean toward the sun coming in the window.
He showed me pieces of bone that had been removed from a shoulder wound, laying them on my desk, in the sun.
I talked with him for about an hour, questioning about his army experiences, his home...he is mustered out. Back to Albany.
A soldier bumped into me on the White House grounds, swearing because he had not been able to get his pay; his crutch poked at the ground, his leg-stump jerked, as he talked to me.