Abraham Lincoln's
Second Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1865 (Just a few weeks before his assassination)
Fellow-Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office
there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the
first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during
which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every
point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention
and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be
presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends,
is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no
prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously
directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it.
While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted
altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city
seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide
effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would
make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war
rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally
over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted
a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the
Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement
of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God,
and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem 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, but let us judge not, that
we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of
neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe
unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses
come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall
suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through
His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both
North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the
offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of
war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until
all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in,
to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a
just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
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