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Quotation from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln
“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."”
Second Inaugural Address, Paragraph 3 (Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents (GPO, 1989), Avalon Project)
Lincoln accepts that the war may be a full repayment for slavery and affirms God's justice in the words of Psalm 19:9.
Citation: "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."" — Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, Paragraph 3 (Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents (GPO, 1989), Avalon Project). (id lincoln-second-inaugural-address-q6)
Portrait: Abraham Lincoln giving his second Inaugural Address (4 March 1865), Alexander Gardner, Public domain.
