Abraham Lincoln’sSecond Inaugural

Address

Abby Snellings

•It was given on March 4th 1865

•Less then a month later Lincoln was assassinated

•At the time it was given and for several decades after his death--the second inaugural address was more widely read and was more important than the Gettysburg Address even though today every school studies the Gettysburg Address.

•He suggested that the war was God’s retribution to slavery

• “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."

•Many wanted to punish the south, dissolve their statehoods etc.

•Lincoln had a vision of reconstruction, of reconciliation. He knew it was critical to get the war behind us.

•Throughout the war he wanted the preservation of the union

•“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.”

•Lincoln wanted national reconciliation

•"With malice toward none, with charity for all."

•Lincoln used many Biblical references in the address.

•This was a fusion of spiritual faith and politics

•Lincoln was a man of deep faith but that should not be confused with any form of religious trappings

•His deep faith in God's will--both as punisher and savior--comes out very clearly in the speech.

Work Cited• Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address;

endorsed by Lincoln, April10, 1865, March 4, 1865; Series 3, General Correspondence, 1837-1897; The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Washington, DC: American Memory Project, [2000-02]), http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alhome.html.

• "Abraham Lincoln: Second Inaugural Address." Bartleby.com. Web. 27 Sep 2009. <http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html>.

• "Abraham Lincoln: Second Inaugural Address." Reading About the World. Web. 27 Sep 2009. <http://www.wsu.edu:8001/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/lincoln.html>.