Abraham Lincoln: Second Inaugural Address (1865)

Introduction

President Lincoln signed Idaho into existence on March 4, 1863. Exactly two years later, on March 4, 1865, he delivered his Second Inaugural Address. He faced a nation reeling from four years of war but hopeful for its imminent end. One month later General Ulysses S. Grant accepted General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Lincoln stepped to the podium with a war-weary face and a speech crafted to “bind the nation’s wounds.” With 600,000 dead, he offered more of a sermon than a speech, drawing on Biblical themes and his sense of God’s majesty as the route to national healing. Some consider the words he offered the most profound statement of American political theology in the nation’s history. He called slavery the cause of the war; he asked Americans not to judge one another; and he invoked the providence of God who laid the “terrible war” at the feet of both the Confederacy and the Union for the offense of slavery. God’s judgments, he said, remained “true and righteous altogether.” Framed by that assurance, Lincoln closed his speech with a compassionate plea for “malice toward none; with charity for all” to achieve a “just and lasting peace.”

One month later, Lincoln was assassinated, and America lost the chief spokesperson for national healing. His words endure, however. For Idahoans, the words face our Capitol building. For Americans, they are housed in the Lincoln memorial, line to the Washington monument and the United States Capitol.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

• At the end of the second paragraph, Lincoln writes “And the war came.” According to the preceding sentences, how did the war come? What observations do you have about how Lincoln arrives at his last sentence of that paragraph?
• What does Lincoln mean by “Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding”?
• How does Lincoln understand God’s role in the conflict? He hints at it when he says “The Almighty has His own purposes.”
• What sentence or sentiment caught your attention the most?

Second Inaugural Address – Abraham Lincoln

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, 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 bond-man’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 a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Source: Lincoln, A. (1865, March 4). Second inaugural address. The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-35