In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the same time.

Lincoln wrote these lines during the American Civil War, when both Union and Confederacy frequently invoked divine sanction for their cause. The sentiment appears in a private memorandum Lincoln drafted in 1862, reflecting his growing habit of theological self-scrutiny and his reluctance to claim that God’s purposes neatly aligned with any human program. Rather than a public speech, it was an internal meditation on providence, moral responsibility, and the limits of partisan certainty—ideas that would later surface more famously in his Second Inaugural Address (1865), with its emphasis that “the Almighty has His own purposes.”

The passage cautions against treating political or military aims as identical with God’s will. Lincoln notes that in “great contests” each side can sincerely believe it acts righteously, yet sincerity does not guarantee truth: at least one side must be mistaken if their claims are mutually exclusive. The final sentence underscores a logical and moral restraint—God cannot simultaneously endorse opposite outcomes—thereby exposing the presumptuousness of religious certainty in partisan conflict. The quote also reveals Lincoln’s characteristic humility: rather than declaring God unambiguously “for” the Union, he frames the war as a human struggle under a higher judgment that may confound both sides’ self-justifications.

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party—and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.