Second Inaugural Address

Summary

Abraham Lincoln took the oath for his second term on 4 March 1865 on the East Portico of the Capitol, under a newly finished dome, before a crowd standing in mud after a morning of rain. The war was nearly won: Sherman had marched through Georgia and the Carolinas, Grant held Lee at Petersburg, and Congress had sent the Thirteenth Amendment to the states five weeks earlier. Listeners might have expected a victory speech. Lincoln gave one of about 700 words, the second shortest inaugural address, and it claimed no triumph. He begins by declining to review the progress of the armies, which everyone already knows, and offers no prediction. He then recalls March 1861, when both sides dreaded war and one would make war rather than let the nation survive, while the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came. The long third paragraph is the theological heart of the address. Lincoln names slavery as the interest everyone knew was somehow the cause of the war, notes that neither side expected so long or so fundamental a conflict, and observes that both read the same Bible and pray to the same God. He refuses to condemn the South (let us judge not, that we be not judged) and declares that the Almighty has His own purposes. Quoting Matthew 18:7, he proposes that American slavery is an offense God now wills to remove, and that the war is the woe due to North and South alike. If the war must go on until every drop of blood drawn with the lash is paid by another drawn with the sword, still the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, words from Psalm 19. The single-sentence final paragraph turns from judgment to mercy: with malice toward none and charity for all, the nation must bind up its wounds, care for the soldier, his widow and his orphan, and seek a just and lasting peace. Frederick Douglass, who heard it, called it a sacred effort. Six weeks later Lincoln was dead, and the address is carved in the north chamber of the Lincoln Memorial.

Plot or Argument

• No review, no prediction (Paragraph 1)

  Lincoln contrasts this occasion with his first inauguration, when a detailed statement of policy seemed fitting. The war's progress is already public and reasonably encouraging, and he deliberately ventures no forecast about the future.

• How the war came (Paragraph 2)

  Looking back to March 1861, he recalls that all dreaded war and sought to avert it while insurgent agents worked to dissolve the Union by negotiation. One side would make war and the other would accept it, and the war came.

• Slavery and the shared Bible (Paragraph 3, first half)

  Lincoln names slavery, one-eighth of the population held in bondage in the South, as the interest that was somehow the cause of the war. Neither side expected its scale; both pray to the same God against the other; and he checks his own judgment of the South with the words of Christ.

• The Almighty has His own purposes (Paragraph 3, second half)

  Neither side's prayers have been fully answered. Lincoln reads the war as the woe God gives to both North and South for the offense of slavery, hopes and prays it may soon end, but accepts that if it must continue the judgments of the Lord are still true and righteous.

• With malice toward none (Paragraph 4)

  In one long sentence Lincoln turns to the work ahead: to finish the war, bind up the nation's wounds, care for wounded soldiers, widows, and orphans, and achieve a just and lasting peace at home and among all nations.

Lessons

• Humility in judgment

  At the moment of victory Lincoln declines to claim that God is simply on the Union's side. Both armies pray to the same God, neither prayer has been answered fully, and the war is a woe due to North and South together. He condemns slavery plainly while refusing to set his own section above judgment.

  • Why does Lincoln say the prayers of both sides could not be answered, and that neither has been answered fully?
  • How can Lincoln call slavery an offense and still say let us judge not?
  • What would have been lost if Lincoln had given a victory speech instead?

• Providence and responsibility

  Lincoln interprets the war as part of God's purposes without making human beings mere puppets: offenses must needs come, yet woe to the one by whom they come. He holds divine sovereignty and human guilt together, as the verse he quotes from Matthew does.

  • What does Lincoln mean by The Almighty has His own purposes?
  • How does the quotation from Matthew 18:7 allow him to speak of both providence and guilt?
  • Is it wise for a political leader to interpret current events as the judgment of God? What safeguards does Lincoln use?

• Mercy after justice

  The address moves from the hard justice of blood for blood to a closing sentence of charity, healing, and care for the wounded and bereaved. Lincoln shows that a just verdict on the past does not cancel the duty of mercy toward former enemies and the war's victims.

  • List the tasks named in the final sentence. Which look backward and which look forward?
  • Why does Lincoln place malice toward none immediately after the darkest passage of the speech?
  • What would it mean for a nation, and not only a person, to act with charity for all?

Context

By March 1865 the Confederacy was collapsing. Atlanta, Savannah, and Columbia had fallen, Lee's army was besieged at Petersburg, and the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery had passed Congress on 31 January. Lincoln had been reelected in November 1864 over George McClellan. Questions of reconstruction, the treatment of the defeated South, and the future of the freed people were already dividing his own party.

Composition

Lincoln wrote the address himself in the weeks before the inauguration, and it shows the habits of his private reflection on providence, especially the undated fragment known as the Meditation on the Divine Will, usually placed in 1862. Its 701 words are built almost entirely from short Anglo-Saxon words and from the King James Bible, which it quotes or echoes repeatedly (Genesis 3:19, Matthew 7:1, Matthew 18:7, Psalm 19:9). The Avalon text stored here runs the address together as a single block; it is conventionally printed in four paragraphs.

Reception

Newspaper response divided along party lines, and Lincoln himself wrote to Thurlow Weed that he expected the speech to wear well but did not think it immediately popular, since men are not flattered to be told that their purposes differ from the Almighty's. Frederick Douglass, admitted to the White House reception that evening, told Lincoln it was a sacred effort. After the assassination on 14 April it came to be read as Lincoln's testament, and it was inscribed beside the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Memorial, dedicated in 1922.

Comparisons

• gettysburg-address

  Both are brief, biblical in cadence, and concerned with the meaning of the war, but Gettysburg (1863) asks the living to finish the unfinished work, while the Second Inaugural asks what God intended by the war and how to end it in charity.

• narrative-and-fourth-of-july

  Douglass, who heard the Second Inaugural and praised it, had argued in 1852 that slavery mocked the nation's professed faith; Lincoln's address names slavery as the offense for which the whole nation was paying.

• o-captain-my-captain

  Whitman's elegy, written after the assassination six weeks later, mourns the leader whose last major speech had asked the nation to bind up its wounds.

• fdr-first-inaugural-address

  Both inaugurals speak to a nation in crisis and draw on Scripture, but Roosevelt promises vigorous action, while Lincoln refuses prediction and submits the outcome to providence.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The refusal in Paragraph 1 to review the war's progress or predict its end, unusual for a president near victory.
• The four short words that end Paragraph 2, and the war came, after a long balanced sentence.
• The word somehow in the sentence naming slavery as the cause of the war, and Lincoln's careful restraint around it.
• The pivot from both sides praying to the same God to the brief sentence The Almighty has His own purposes.
• The single long sentence of Paragraph 4, built from a series of with phrases and then a series of to phrases.

Key terms and names

Inaugural address

The speech a president gives on taking the oath of office; Lincoln's second, on 4 March 1865, is about one-fifth the length of his first.

Insurgents

Lincoln's word for the leaders of secession, who in his account sought to dissolve the Union by negotiation and then by war.

Peculiar and powerful interest

Lincoln's phrase for slavery in the South, peculiar in the old sense of belonging to one region.

Offenses

In the King James wording of Matthew 18:7, stumbling blocks or causes of sin; Lincoln treats American slavery as one such offense.

Unrequited toil

Labor that was never paid for; Lincoln's phrase for two hundred and fifty years of enslaved work.

Scourge

A whip, and figuratively a punishment sent as chastisement; Lincoln calls the war a mighty scourge.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does Lincoln say there is less occasion for an extended address than at his first inauguration in 1861?
2. Comprehension According to Paragraph 2, what did each side intend in 1861, and what does Lincoln say the Government claimed the right to do about slavery?
3. Interpretation Why does Lincoln quote Matthew 18:7 rather than simply declaring that the South was wrong?
4. Interpretation How does the sentence about blood drawn with the lash and blood drawn with the sword make the North as well as the South answerable for slavery?
5. Interpretation What is the relationship between the stern justice of Paragraph 3 and the charity of Paragraph 4? Does one depend on the other?
6. Big Question Can a nation, like a person, be guilty of a sin and need to repent of it?
7. Big Question Lincoln claims firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right. How can someone act with conviction while admitting that God's purposes may differ from his own?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 18:7 (Scripture)

  Lincoln quotes this saying of Jesus in full: offenses must needs come, but woe to the man by whom they come. It lets him affirm both that the war lies within providence and that those responsible for slavery are truly guilty.

• Psalm 19:9 (Scripture)

  The phrase as was said three thousand years ago introduces David's psalm: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Lincoln uses it to accept even a prolonged war as just.

• Matthew 7:1; Genesis 3:19 (Scripture)

  In one sentence Lincoln sets the curse on Adam, to eat bread in the sweat of his own face, against slaveholders who ate by the sweat of others, then checks himself with Christ's command not to judge.

• Augustine, City of God, Book V (Church Fathers)

  Augustine argues that God grants and withholds victory and dominion according to purposes hidden from men, and that wars may chasten the righteous as well as the wicked; Lincoln's reading of the war as a judgment on both sections stands in that tradition.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Both sides prayed to the same God and neither prayer was fully answered, so God's purposes differ from both; slavery was the cause of the war and an offense God wills to remove; the war is the woe due to North and South alike for that offense, and God's judgments are just even if it continues; therefore the victors should end the war without malice, bind up its wounds, and seek a just peace.

Rhetorical device: Antithesis. In Paragraph 2 one side would make war rather than let the nation survive and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, a balance Lincoln repeats in Paragraph 3 with blood drawn with the lash and blood drawn with the sword.

Debate: Resolved: Lincoln was right to interpret the Civil War as a judgment of God on the whole nation, North and South alike.

Memory Work

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.

The Almighty has His own purposes.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Lincoln quotes or echoes Scripture at least four times in a speech of about 700 words. Analyze how each biblical passage advances his argument about the cause of the war, its meaning, and the peace that should follow.

Comparison with The Gettysburg Address: Compare the Gettysburg Address (1863) and the Second Inaugural (1865). How does Lincoln's understanding of the war's purpose change between them, and what stays the same in his style?

Medical Lens

The closing charge to bind up the nation's wounds and to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan is a figure of national healing, but it also named a concrete task: the Union army had hundreds of thousands of wounded and disabled soldiers, cared for in general hospitals and by the US Sanitary Commission. The phrase on caring for the soldier was adopted as the motto of the Department of Veterans Affairs, making the address a reference point in the history of veterans' medical care.

• Paragraph 4

  The charge to bind up the nation's wounds and care for the wounded soldier, his widow, and his orphan, later the motto of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

  WAR Wounds Nursing Caregiving

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Read the address aloud twice, once as a victory speech might be read and once as a sermon. Then discuss which delivery fits the words, and mark every place where Lincoln quotes or echoes the King James Bible.

• Essay

  Lincoln told Thurlow Weed that the address was not immediately popular. Using the text, explain which listeners in March 1865 would have been least pleased by it, and why Lincoln said it anyway.

• Fiction

  Write the evening of 4 March 1865 from the point of view of a Union soldier on leave who heard the speech in the crowd, including his thoughts on the words about him who shall have borne the battle.

Further Reading

• Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, Ronald C. White Jr.

  A book-length close reading of the address, its drafting, delivery, and theology.

• Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, Allen C. Guelzo

  An intellectual biography attentive to Lincoln's religious thought and his view of providence.

• The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Mark A. Noll

  Explains how Northern and Southern Christians read the same Bible to opposite conclusions, the problem the address names.

• Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, Douglas L. Wilson