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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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 three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." |
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| 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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