Other Men’s Sweat

Speaking of the South’s slaveholders and those fighting in their defense, Lincoln suggests it’s “strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces…” In GENESIS 3:19, God tells Adam that, as a result of his sin, ““In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (KJV). When paired with God’s words in 2 THESSALONIANS 3:10, through the Apostle Paul, to the Thessalonian Christians thousands of years later, “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat,” Lincoln’s allusion makes clear his belief that one human owning another is unjust, and thus not pleasing to God, at best.