The Second Inaugural Address

(Lincoln, standing bareheaded from mrkash.com)

It wasn't what the audience was expecting to hear when they gathered on the muddy field at the Capitol on March 4, 1865 to listen to President Abraham Lincoln be sworn in to start his second term in office.

There was no detail on the progress of the war other than a passing acknowledgement:

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. 

This though it appeared the long and terrible Civil War was on the verge of ending.  Lee's starving army was melting away from its entrenchments at Richmond and Petersburg.  Sherman's army was now in North Carolina facing only weak opposition, having rampaged through South Carolina and Georgia in prior months.  The last open Confederate seaport in Wilmington, NC had fallen several weeks before.

There was no discussion or even indication of what policy that the President was contemplating for the Reconstruction of the seceding states when the war ended, a topic that was already engendering controversy about politicians in the Capital and around the country.

There was no lengthy discussion of any policy or issue facing the nation.  The address took only about ten minutes to deliver and then it was over. 

For a President and a country which had waged a four year struggle at great cost which is about to end in victory, it is a speech empty of triumphalism.

Instead the audience was treated to a brooding sermon unlike any given by a President before or since.  It's as if he is puzzling over the events of the prior four years and interpreting God's will for the onlookers.

In the second paragraph he deftly points the finger for triggering the conflict on the seceding states:

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.   

But then he seems to waver, adding "And the war came" as though driven by a force beyond the power of both parties, perhaps suggesting that neither (or both) are to blame.  It is a passage in which the President hearkens back to the theme from 1861 and continued throughout the next several years that the conflict was about Union.  

Yet the rest of the speech presents another view of what the war was really about; slavery.

These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.  All knew
that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.  

Then he returns to the unexpected nature of the war and the suffering of both sides despite their common religious belief.

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. 

But whatever both sides thought in 1861, God had his own purpose:

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?

What follows is a Biblical vision that is both striking and terrifying and casts the President, along with every other citizen, as subservient to God's will because of the gravity of the offense.

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 by 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."

This stark passage makes the final paragraph of the speech even more stunning.  With no transition, Lincoln abruptly delivers a benediction suffused with grace, forgiveness and sympathy.

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. 

With those words the strangest and most memorable Inaugural address in America history concluded.

FULL TEXT OF SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

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 bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by 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.