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Abraham Lincoln Secound Inaugural Address
March 4, 1865
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 threee 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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