We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

These lines come from Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, delivered in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 1861, at the moment the United States was fracturing over secession. Several Southern states had already declared their departure from the Union, and civil war was imminent. In the address Lincoln argues that secession is legally void, pledges not to interfere with slavery where it already exists, and insists he will “hold, occupy, and possess” federal property—while also appealing for reconciliation. The quoted peroration is his closing appeal to shared national memory and affection, urging Americans to resist hatred and to preserve the Union.

Lincoln frames the crisis not as an inevitable clash between irreconcilable peoples but as a tragic estrangement among intimates—“not enemies, but friends.” The passage blends moral exhortation with poetic imagery: “mystic chords of memory” suggests that shared sacrifices, graves, and domestic life bind the nation more deeply than political quarrels divide it. By invoking “the better angels of our nature,” Lincoln appeals to conscience and restraint, urging listeners to choose empathy over vengeance. The rhetoric aims to make reunion feel emotionally and spiritually necessary, casting Union as a living chorus that can be revived when citizens allow memory and moral feeling to “touch” them again.

1) “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.”
2) “The mystic chords of memory … will yet swell the chorus of the Union … by the better angels of our nature.”
3) “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”