Analysis: No president since Lincoln has faced as stern a test as Joe Biden

When Abraham Lincoln readied himself to take up office in 1861, the nation was on the verge of war, with the Confederate flag visible across the banks of Potomac, fluttering atop a hotel in the Virginia city of Alexandra.

Joe Biden faces a stern test to unite a fractured nation after the chaos of the Trump era. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

It served as an ominous reminder that even as Lincoln swore the oath on his Bible, Washington DC remained perilously exposed to invasion. The events in Fort Sumter which triggered a bloody civil war were just weeks away, and the 16th president of the United States felt the weight of the occasion more than anyone before, or since.

The coming term, Lincoln announced, was beginning “under great and peculiar difficulty,” with the south threatening to tear the republic apart. “A disruption of the federal union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted,” he warned.

Some 160 years later, with the great American experiment facing its gravest test in peacetime history, Joe Biden will follow in Lincoln’s footsteps, ascending to the helm of a fractured and fraught nation.

For decades, if not longer, the focus of inaugurations has been trained on the pomp and ceremony of a sacred occasion. But in 2021, there is no appetite for spectacle or ostentation. All that matters is what Mr Biden says, and it is the substance of his words, not the standard of his oratory, that is paramount. A world waits to see how reaffirms what Franklin Roosevelt called “our covenant with ourselves.”

The quadrennial rite of investiture is seen by some as the US equivalent of a coronation. In reality, it is more like a marriage, formalising the union between a new president and the electorate. Some fear it will not last, but the greatest threat to its success is not the 74 million people who voted for Mr Biden‘s opponent; it is the small but vociferous subset of that group who have vowed to spill blood in service of the delusion that anarchy will prolong their grip on power.

It will require the greatest speech of Mr Biden’s career to strike the right tone and convinces America that, after the chaos and discord of the Trump era, it possesses the will and means to turn a corner.

Perhaps the sternest challenge will be urging moderation, when the US Capitol was so shamefully attacked, leaving five people dead. Such actions must be vehemently condemned, and repeatedly so.

But even after Mr Trump made history by becoming the only president to be impeached twice, there is still no sense of conciliation. The contagion of rage is unabated, and with continuing threats of violence, there is no sense it will pass any time soon.

Yet cooling the national temperature is imperative. The success of Mr Biden’s administration depends on it. He must choose words which sow the seeds of reason and civility, and deliver an address which appeals to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

Of course, even a statesman of Lincoln’s stature could not prevent the carnage which followed his inauguration, and the “bonds of affection” he spoke of seem nowadays seem irreparably frayed. But in time, he preserved a nation and vindicated its democratic ideals. Mr Biden knows that this is the very test he will now face. There can be none greater.

A message from the editor:Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers. If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.