Jr.×Lincoln

Two men who shaped freedom with words face the ones they wish they could take back.

00:00of09:53

legend · A

Martin Luther King Jr.

1929–1968

Every sentence arrives on time

corpus11.3k pages · sermons, speeches, letters

Abraham Lincoln speaking

You know, Dr. King, reminds me of a story about a fellow back in Illinois who kept a list of all the foolish things he'd ever said. Turned out to be the longest book in the county. I suspect we're both qualified to write such volumes.

legend · B

Abraham Lincoln

1809–1865

Starts with a joke. Ends you.

corpus22.7k pages · letters, debates, speeches

full transcript

Abraham Lincoln
You know, Dr. King, reminds me of a story about a fellow back in Illinois who kept a list of all the foolish things he'd ever said. Turned out to be the longest book in the county. I suspect we're both qualified to write such volumes.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Lincoln, I appreciate your capacity to lighten what may be a heavy conversation. But yes, I've carried certain words with me like stones in my pocket.
Abraham Lincoln
Well then, let's empty those pockets. I'll go first if you like. Gives me time to figure out which stone weighs the most.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Please.
Abraham Lincoln
In my first inaugural, March of eighteen sixty-one, I told the South I had no purpose to interfere with slavery where it existed. I said I had no lawful right to do so, and no inclination. That last word, 'inclination,' sits poorly with me now.
Martin Luther King Jr.
You were trying to hold the Union together.
Abraham Lincoln
I was. And I did believe I lacked the constitutional authority, that's true enough. But 'inclination' suggested I had no moral fire on the question. That wasn't quite honest. I hated slavery. Always had. But I subordinated that hatred to what I thought was political necessity.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The word betrayed your heart for the sake of your strategy.
Abraham Lincoln
That's about the size of it. I told myself I was being prudent. Maybe I was just being cowardly. What's yours, Doctor?
Martin Luther King Jr.
In my letter from Birmingham jail, I wrote about the white moderate. I said the Negro's great stumbling block was not the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.
Abraham Lincoln
That's powerful writing. What about it troubles you?
Martin Luther King Jr.
I don't regret the substance. I meant every word about preferring a negative peace to a positive peace. But I called them a greater stumbling block than the Klansman, and I wonder if that formulation obscured as much as it revealed.
Abraham Lincoln
How so?
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Klansman was and is a terrorist, a murderer. The moderate was a frustration, an obstacle, a man asleep at the wheel of history. But in my rhetorical urgency, I may have seemed to equate them. I've wondered whether that sentence alienated people I needed to wake up.
Abraham Lincoln
You were writing from a jail cell, weren't you? After being arrested for parading without a permit or some such nonsense.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Yes. And the white clergymen had called our actions unwise and untimely. I was answering men who counseled patience while children were being bitten by dogs.
Abraham Lincoln
Then your anger was righteous. Maybe the sentence was too.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps. But I've learned that righteous anger can sometimes be a luxury a leader cannot afford. Or can afford only in measured doses.
Abraham Lincoln
Now that's a thing I understand. After the New York draft riots in sixty-three, I wanted to condemn the whole city. Wanted to say they'd disgraced the Union cause. Seward talked me out of it.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Your Secretary of State.
Abraham Lincoln
Yes. He reminded me I'd need New York again. He was right, but I still wish I'd found some middle way. Some sentence that honored the truth without torching the bridge.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That's the knife edge we walk. The prophet must speak truth to power. But the leader must keep enough people inside the tent to actually accomplish something.
Abraham Lincoln
And you were both, weren't you? Prophet and leader. That's a harder road than either one alone.
Martin Luther King Jr.
As were you, Mr. Lincoln. Your second inaugural is the speech of a prophet. 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
Abraham Lincoln
I meant that. Though I'll confess I wondered if it was too much Scripture for a political speech. But by then I'd stopped caring much what the political men thought. The war had gone on too long for anything but the truth.
Martin Luther King Jr.
You said if God wills the war continue until every drop of blood drawn by the lash is paid by another drawn by the sword, still it must be said the judgments of the Lord are just. That's almost unbearable in its honesty.
Abraham Lincoln
Six hundred thousand dead by then, Doctor. Maybe more. I couldn't pretend anymore that God was clearly on our side, or that the war was anything but a judgment on the whole nation. North and South both.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And yet you ended with malice toward none, with charity for all.
Abraham Lincoln
Well, what else could I do? We still had to live together when it was over. Still had to be a country. You can speak judgment and mercy in the same breath if you mean them both.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I tried to do that. Toward the end I was speaking more about Vietnam, about poverty, about the deeper systemic violence. Some of my own people thought I'd wandered from the path.
Abraham Lincoln
The emancipation path, you mean?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Yes. They wanted me to stay focused on civil rights narrowly defined. But I couldn't separate the war from the poverty from the racism. It was all one thing, one sickness in the American soul.
Abraham Lincoln
I expect that's true. Slavery was never just about slavery either. It was about what kind of country we'd be. Whether we meant what we said in seventy-six.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And that brings me back to my sentence, the one I regret. Because perhaps I was wrong to regret it. Perhaps the moderate needed to hear exactly that, needed to be shocked into motion.
Abraham Lincoln
Or perhaps you were right the first time and right the second time too. Maybe it was the right sentence for that moment, and maybe it's also right to wish you'd found a better one. Regret doesn't mean you were wrong.
Martin Luther King Jr.
You sound like a man familiar with regret, Mr. Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln
I wrote a letter once, when I was a young man. Cruel letter, mocking a political opponent. My friends published it without my name attached, but everyone knew it was mine. The man challenged me to a duel.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Did you fight?
Abraham Lincoln
Nearly. We met on an island in the Mississippi River. But we patched it up at the last moment. I never wrote that way again. Learned that words can kill just as sure as bullets, and sometimes slower.
Martin Luther King Jr.
But you couldn't always avoid wounding, could you? The hard truth wounds. The necessary word cuts.
Abraham Lincoln
No. Sometimes you have to cut. But you ought to know the difference between a surgical cut and just plain meanness. And you ought to regret it when you're not sure which one you made.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That's the burden of stewardship over language. We both knew our words would outlive us, would be read by people we'd never meet. And still we had to speak into the immediate crisis, answer the immediate antagonist.
Abraham Lincoln
Exactly so. You're writing for history but arguing with a clerk in Alabama. I was trying to save the Union but answering editorials in the Richmond papers.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Did you ever want to take back the whole first inaugural? Not just the word 'inclination,' but the whole posture of it?
Abraham Lincoln
Some days. But I think it was honest to where I was in March of sixty-one. I grew into the presidency. The war taught me. Maybe that first speech is embarrassing precisely because it shows how much I had to learn.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I read some of my early sermons from Montgomery and I hear a young man. Confident, perhaps too confident. Not yet acquainted with the depth of the suffering I was asking people to endure.
Abraham Lincoln
But you asked them anyway. And they followed.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Yes. As yours followed you. And many died.
Abraham Lincoln
That's the other regret, isn't it? Not the sentences we wrote, but the sentences we pronounced. Not our words, but our decisions. Sending men to die for a cause we believed in.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I never held public office. Never sent soldiers into battle. But I sent children into streets where they were attacked. I organized marches where I knew people would be hurt.
Abraham Lincoln
You didn't pull the triggers. You didn't set the dogs loose.
Martin Luther King Jr.
No. But I knew what would happen. I counted on it happening. The violence was part of the strategy, the way it would appear on television, the way it would shock the conscience of the nation.
Abraham Lincoln
That's different from ordering men into battle, Doctor. You didn't command the violence. You exposed it.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps. But four little girls died in Birmingham. Not because I planted the bomb, but because I'd made Birmingham a battlefield. That's a sentence I didn't write but I'm still responsible for.
Abraham Lincoln
No sir. You're responsible for what you did, not for what evil men chose to do. I held the same debate with myself. Every telegram from the War Department, every list of casualties. Did I cause those deaths by refusing to compromise on union and emancipation? Maybe. But the men who fired the shots, who started the rebellion, they caused them more.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And yet you carried them anyway. The deaths.
Abraham Lincoln
Every single one. Still do, I imagine. That's different from regret, though. You can know you made the right decision and still carry the weight of it. Still wish it could have been otherwise.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps that's the only honest posture for a leader. To act with conviction and live with the consequences without pretending they don't hurt.
Abraham Lincoln
I think that's right. And maybe the sentence we regret is just a symbol for all of that. One moment where we can see ourselves clearly, see what we did and what it cost and wonder if we could have done it better.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Could we have?
Abraham Lincoln
Done it better? Maybe. Maybe not. I wasn't wise enough to know then. I'm not sure I'm wise enough to know now. But I know I meant well. I know I tried. And I know that when I said I had no inclination to interfere with slavery, I was lying to myself as much as to the South.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And I know that when I called the moderate the greater stumbling block, I was perhaps more interested in being heard than in being perfectly accurate. The prophet in me overcame the diplomat.
Abraham Lincoln
Well, Doctor, we're both dead now. Our words are in the books and the monuments. People will read them and argue about them and use them for their own purposes. We don't get to take them back.
Martin Luther King Jr.
No. We don't. But perhaps we can at least be honest with each other about what we wish we'd said differently. That's something.
Abraham Lincoln
It is. And who knows? Maybe somebody listening will learn from our mistakes. Maybe some young speaker will think twice before letting anger write the sentence that prudence should draft.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Or maybe they'll learn that sometimes anger is the only honest voice. That sometimes the perfect sentence is the enemy of the necessary one.
Abraham Lincoln
Could be both. Could be the lesson is to know which moment you're in. That takes more wisdom than either of us had most of the time.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And requires more grace than most of us deserve.
Abraham Lincoln
But we got it anyway, didn't we? We got to speak, got to lead, got to see at least some of what we fought for come to pass. Even if we didn't live to see it all.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Even if we made mistakes along the way.
Abraham Lincoln
Especially because we made mistakes. That's what makes us human instead of marble. The regrets are proof we cared enough to wish we'd done better.