This Week’s Foundations of Freedom Commentary: Binding Up Our Nation’s Wounds (AUDIO)

Produced weekly by Salem Media

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, America stood on the edge of collapse.

Over the next four years, the Civil War claimed more than 700,000 lives and tested whether our Republic could endure. As the war drew to a close, Lincoln looked beyond victory, he looked toward healing.

In his second inaugural address, he challenged the nation: “Let us strive on to bind up the nation’s wounds to achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.”

Lincoln understood that preserving the greatest experiment in self-government required more than winning a war. It required the character to restore what had been broken.

More than 160 years later, America still faces division. The question is not whether we’ll disagree. The question is whether we still have the wisdom and the character to heal together.