Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

“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 man should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, lest we be judged.” -Abraham Lincoln

“By identifying slavery as the cause of war, the speech stands as a testament to the transformative power of the Civil War - a war begun to defend the Union that became a war to end slavery. By focusing on God’s presence and agency in the war, the speech stands as Lincoln’s most definitive statement on the Civil War’s meaning to the Nation.” Primary Source Text And Expert Analysis

In this speech, Lincoln sought not to celebrate the victory that his side had gained in the civil war, but rather to mourn the loss that all had experienced in the 4 years of war that they had all been a part of. In Lincoln’s eyes, the real punishment was not just for the losers, but for both sides, and that these punishments were from God. He stated that both sides worked against each other, and that rather than fighting for a cause, they fought to destroy each other. When the war eventually became a war that was fought with cause, the cause became slavery, and the need to emancipate the slaves. At the end of his speech, when it would have been appropriate to tell his people that the Confederacy were the loser and to never forget who the real leaders of the new world were, he told them to forget those boundaries and to concentrate on making the United States, united again.

When I was reading this speech, I hear our president’s voice reciting Lincolns speech. I don’t do it intentionally, but I hear him nonetheless. And then I think, “How appropriate!” It sounds clichéd to say, but it is true, these words that Lincoln spoke 144 years ago, seem to be manifest today. We have accepted and fully preserved the sense that Lincoln wanted his people to feel. It is in this speech that the reader can really see the true feeling that Lincoln had for this war and slavery. And his modern sensibility towards people. He had higher expectations for his people, and that we can see in how he asks them to take the higher road, by letting them bring their confederate brothers back into their nation. He saw that in order to move past the horrors that both sides had created against the other, they had to "bury the hachett" and move towards the future together.