Lincoln Second Inaugural Quotes

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 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.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

the day may not be far off when mind and soul, and not the color of his skin, shall mark the measure of a man.

Lincoln believed that the ability to frame an argument and sway minds was the essence of power in a representative democracy

A brilliant statistician who was friendly with the president, Kennedy informed the diplomat that Mary Todd Lincoln was holding a reception that afternoon; the two of them could go together, if the marquis would like.

his hatred of slavery, keeping his focus on the political actions that would best advance the war effort and save the Union, carefully calibrating his actions to public opinion, to the intense irritation of such men as Chase and Douglass.

[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically re-signed their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and Martin Luther King's 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' all have their metaphysical roots in the biblical concept of the imago dei ((i.e. humans bearing the image of God). If pro-lifers are irrational for grounding basic human rights in the concept of a transcendent Creator, these important historical documents--all of which advanced our national understanding of equality--are irrational as well.

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.' [Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 701-word second inaugural address, delivered at the United States Capitol on March 4, 1865.]

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!-All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years," Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in 1837, two years before O'Sullivan's manifesto. "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

AUTHOR’S NOTE The First Assassin is a work of fiction, and specifically a work of historical fiction—meaning that much of it is based on real people, places, and events. My goal never has been to tell a tale about what really happened but to tell what might have happened by blending known facts with my imagination. Characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, and John Hay were, of course, actual people. When they speak on these pages, their words are occasionally drawn from things they are reported to have said. At other times, I literally put words in their mouths. Historical events and circumstances such as Lincoln’s inauguration, the fall of Fort Sumter, and the military crisis in Washington, D.C., provide both a factual backdrop and a narrative skeleton. Throughout, I have tried to maximize the authenticity and also to tell a good story. Thomas Mallon, an experienced historical novelist, has described writing about the past: “The attempt to reconstruct the surface texture of that world was a homely pleasure, like quilting, done with items close to hand.” For me, the items close to hand were books and articles. Naming all of my sources is impossible. I’ve drawn from a lifetime of reading about the Civil War, starting as a boy who gazed for hours at the battlefield pictures in The Golden Book of the Civil War, which is an adaptation for young readers of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Yet several works stand out as especially important references. The first chapter owes much to an account that appeared in the New York Tribune on February 26, 1861 (and is cited in A House Dividing, by William E. Baringer). It is also informed by Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, 1861, edited by Norma B. Cuthbert. For details about Washington in 1861: Reveille in Washington, by Margaret Leech; The Civil War Day by Day, by E. B. Long with Barbara Long; Freedom Rising, by Ernest B. Ferguson; The Regiment That Saved the Capitol, by William J. Roehrenbeck; The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, by Thomas P. Lowry; and “Washington City,” in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1861. For information about certain characters: With Malice Toward None, by Stephen B. Oates; Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald; Abe Lincoln Laughing, edited by P. M. Zall; Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries of John Hay, edited by Tyler Dennett; Lincoln Day by Day, Vol. III: 1861–1865, by C. Percy Powell; Agent of Destiny, by John S. D. Eisenhower; Rebel Rose, by Isabel Ross; Wild Rose, by Ann Blackman; and several magazine articles by Charles Pomeroy Stone. For life in the South: Roll, Jordan, Roll, by Eugene D. Genovese; Runaway Slaves, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger; Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich; Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself; The Fire-Eaters, by Eric H. Walther; and The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, by Robert E. May. For background on Mazorca: Argentine Dictator, by John Lynch. This is the second edition of The First Assassin. Except for a few minor edits, it is no different from the first edition.

He read of Lincoln's second inaugural address and of the broad peace Lincoln hoped to gain, and, a page later, he read of the bullet that had slain Lincoln on Good Friday evening in 1865. He clicked his tongue between his teeth at the thought of a President dying at an assassin's hands. Then, all at once, he shivered as if suddenly seized by an ague. He had seen Lincoln in Louisville that Good Friday, had listened to him plead without avail for Kentucky to stay in the Union, had even spoken with him. He shivered again. In defeat in the world he knew, Lincoln had wanted to martyr himself for the United States. In the other world, where there was no need for it, he had been made a martyr in the hour of his greatest triumph.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln said that slavery was the chief cause of the war and noted the complicity of Christians, many of whom “believed weighty political issues could be parsed into good or evil. Lincoln’s words offered a complexity that many found difficult to accept.”The war devastated the playground of evangelical politics and “‘thrashed the certitude of evangelical Protestantism’ as much as World War I shattered European Protestant liberalism.” Lincoln’s contention that Christians played a role in causing the war offers an illuminating and devastating critique of the way toxic religious attitudes stoke fires of hatred. His realism in confronting facts was both masterful and badly needed. Lincoln spoke of “‘American slavery’ as a single offense ascribed to the whole nation.

It is interesting that Lincoln, who was for the most part a skeptic in terms of religion and certainly not a Christian in any sense of orthodoxy, was also knowledgeable enough about Christian theology that he included it in this, his second inaugural address. His remarks were remarkable in their understanding of the faith and doctrines of Christians, Southern and Northern, and they are immensely important for us today in understanding just how much religious beliefs— be they Christian, Jewish, or Muslim— still influence political and foreign policy decisions. Lincoln’s decision to proclaim emancipation with a military order that could not be countermanded by a hostile Supreme Court was masterful. His understanding of the way the deeply embedded beliefs of Christians in the South and the North brought about the war were among the most insightful words spoken about the war made by anyone before or after. The Emancipation Proclamation and the Lieber Code were and remain revolutionary. They both regard the importance of justice as the most important part of law and freedom. To paraphrase a civil rights leader, without justice, there can be no peace.

It was a celebratory time in the North as people sensed the war would soon end, but many knew that the country would face a monumental challenge in reuniting when the fighting was finally over. Lincoln certainly knew and was already trying to prepare the nation. On March 4, 1865, he gave his second inaugural address at the Capitol to forty thousand onlookers. Rather than giving a victory speech or admonishing the South for its role in starting the war, Lincoln encouraged reconciliation. In the short time he spoke, just six or seven minutes, he named the institution of slavery as the cause of the war and described slavery as a national debt created by the “bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil.

The ideal to which Americans hold the republic accountable today dates not from the year that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence but from the year that Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address.

President Lincoln had suggested in his second inaugural address. Referring to the American South, Lincoln said on March 4, 1865: “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 orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

The Cooper Union Address, the Gettysburg Address, the House Divided Speech, the First Inaugural Address, and the Second Inaugural were all performed by Lincoln prior to and during his term in office. To this day, they are still hailed as oratorical masterpieces.

We all know the Lincoln of the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address. We need to know the Lincoln of the Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and of the Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, both talks in which he vents his favorite enthusiasms. We need to understand his thirst for economic and industrial development. We need to realize that he was a lawyer for corporations, a vigorous advocate of property rights, and a defender of an “elitist” economics against the unreflective populist bromides of his age. We need to focus on his love for the Founders as guides to the American future. We need to grapple with his ferocious ambition, personal and political.

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;

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.

Religion commandeered both sides of the slavery issue. Lincoln made this point in his Second Inaugural: “Both [sides] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”8 The bloodshed might have been stemmed were it not for the unmovable certainty religion breeds in the faithful. We might say today that abolitionists motivated by religion were correct to be certain on such an obvious issue, but their brethren south of the Mason-Dixon Line were just as certain, and they had the stronger side of the biblical argument. As William Lloyd Garrison, a leading abolitionist, put it, “In this country, the Bible has been used to support slavery and capital punishment; while in the old countries, it has been quoted to sustain all manner of tyranny and persecution. All reforms are anti-Bible.

Written by the Englishman Goldwin Smith, the piece the duchess mentioned had noted the presidential characteristics evident at Gettysburg and in Lincoln’s second inaugural address: If he suffers himself to be guided by events, it is not because he loses sight of principles, much less because he is drifting, but because he deliberately recognizes in events the manifestation of moral forces, which he is bound to consider, and the behests of Providence, which he is bound to obey. He neither floats at random between the different sections of his party, nor does he abandon himself to the impulse of any one of them, whether it be that of the extreme Abolitionists or that of the mere Politicians; but he treats them all as elements of the Union party, which it is his task to hold together, and conduct as a combined army to victory.

Lieber Code, a set of rules for fighting the war

term. While fierce prejudice persisted, black soldiers had made a compelling case through their service that, in courage and devotion to country, they were the equals of white men and had earned the right to be treated as such.

At Lincoln’s second inaugural, a drunken Johnson, who had had one too many whiskeys that morning, plunged into a long, rambling, incoherent discourse, shouting about his humble origins and lecturing the assembled dignitaries from the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps (“With all your fine feathers and gew-gaws”) that they were merely “creatures of the people.” Then, as he took his oath, Johnson visibly and audibly slobbered upon the Bible.

A brilliant statistician who was friendly with the president, Kennedy informed the diplomat that Mary Todd Lincoln was holding a reception that afternoon; the two of them could go together, if the marquis would like. Though Chambrun fretted that he had not yet been formally presented to the president, Kennedy assured him there would be no breach of diplomatic protocol, since Lincoln, harried by duty, did not attend his wife’s levees.

Barack Obama placed his hand on two bibles when he was sworn in to his second term in 2013: the one used by sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln in 1861, (the first time it had been used for the purpose since Lincoln’s inauguration), and assassinated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “traveling Bible.”141

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 orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.“—Last Words of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.

At the Second Inaugural, Lincoln asked his countrymen “to strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.” These same words nourished Franklin Roosevelt. He drew upon them, he said, because Abraham Lincoln had set goals for the future “in terms of which the human mind cannot improve.

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.

Our citizens must act as Americans; not as Americans with a prefix and qualifications; not as Irish-Americans, German-Americans, native Americans—but as Americans pure and simple.28 We must have only one language here, he said, “the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and Second Inaugural, and of Washington’s farewell address.