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Weeks
of lousy weather preceding Lincoln's second inauguration had caused
Pennsylvania Avenue to become a sea of mud and standing water. Thousands of
spectators stood in thick mud at the Capitol grounds to hear the President. As
he stood on the East Portico to take the executive oath, the completed Capitol
dome over the President's head was a physical reminder of the resolve of his
Administration throughout the years of civil war. Chief Justice Salmon Chase
administered the oath of office. In little more than a month, the President
would be assassinated. Photographer:
Alexander Gardner/National Archives.
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS /March 4,
1865
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, insurgent 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
250 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 3,000
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.
For a detailed analysis of Lincoln’s second
inaugural address link to essayist Garry Wills’ article in The Atlantic
Magazine, Sept. 1999: “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/09/lincolns-greatest-speech/306551/
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