Posted on 02/14/2005 6:43:53 PM PST by wagglebee
If the words and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln were emulated in Bush's Second Inaugural Address, it might be instructive to look at Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which some critics say surpasses the Gettysburg Address in sublimity, if not in its memorability in history.
On March 4, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln delivered his address, the Civil War was nearing its end. After four years of being a war president, Lincoln was looking forward to being a "peace president." About 40,000 journeyed to the capital to hear his address. Many were soldiers, some missing an arm or a leg. That and the presence of many blacks in the audience distinguished this address from Lincoln's First Inaugural. Lincoln had written the speech on legal-size paper, possibly in mid-January, but it had many revisions to his handwritten draft. It is next to the shortest, Washington's Second Inaugural Address, which consisted of just over 700 words.
Lincoln opens with "I am called on by the voice of my country to execute the functions of the Chief Magistrate." In his understated way, Lincoln is calling attention to the fact that he is the first president since Andrew Jackson in 1833 to be sworn in a second time.
A little later, he alludes to the situation four years previous in these poetic parallelisms: "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."
Much of the audience was impatient at Lincoln's restrained unjudgmental rhetoric. He didn't use the words "Confederates," "enemy" or "rebel."
In masterful eloquence, Lincoln said: "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 have 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."
Lincoln, who was not a member of any church, echoes the words of the Bible, which were familiar to the listeners; the "wringing their bread" came from Genesis and the "judge not" from the Sermon on the Mount.
He then directly cited scripture to describe the evil of slavery: "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."
Lincoln then implies that "American slavery is one of those offenses," and by that he justifies his signing of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery a few weeks before.
The sublime poetry that follows combines alliteration with internal rhyme as he pleas, "Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away." And then to emphasize his resolve, he continues:
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."
If in the Gettysburg Address Lincoln had appealed to the nation to look behind the Constitution to the Declaration of Independence, now he was looking beyond those documents to a God who had been at work in history for at least three millennia.
Frederick Douglass, a former black slave, who was in the audience said, "It sounded more like a sermon than a state paper."
Lincoln's closing is unsurpassed in his majestic eloquence with the Elizabethan cadences of the King James Version of the Bible.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we now do, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all which we may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
The Washington National Intelligence said of the first paragraph, "They are equally distinguished for patriotism, statesmanship, and benevolence and deserve to be printed in gold."
In the beginning of his address, Lincoln employed inclusive language to emphasize the mutual responsibility for the outbreak of war. Now he would use such inclusive language to work for a reconciled nation.
Images of the lash and the sword were to be replaced with acts of healing and restoration.
Lincoln's second inaugural should be required reading for the secularist leftists.
The Left has been trying to debunk the faith of many of America's great leaders with pure lies, such as:
- George Washington was a Deist (totally untrue)
No, the winner for leftist propoganda these days has to be the ridiculous notion that Lincoln was a homosexual.
You will find alot of people that believe in God,and disagree with you.No problem here----All the South wanted and wants is Not to be unfairly Taxed.Lincoln killed over 300,000 Americans.A Not so Great Man.Indoctrination is hard to overcome.
The homosexual gang's ham fisted attempt to label all dead people as "gay" has really backfired. It seems to have arisen from the homosexual Grand Canyon of need to be fulfilled by misery loves company.
So far, Alexander was homosexual (did wonders for his recent movie), Lincoln was homosexual (easy to smear him as such--he is dead too you see), and many others the homosexuals have laid claim to, including Leonardo Da Vinci, and others.
The homosexuals will also lay claim to people they don't like, in order to somehow shame them (very psychofrentic , don't you think), such as Sen Joe McCarthy and Tom Sellek.
They have many, many websites devoted to this game, here is just one.
Some list the less desirable homosexuals, such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Jim Jones, but most shy away from that.
However, by the time of Lincoln's second inauguration, the Confederacy's surrender was a fait accompli. This speech was a vision for an again united republic to move forward; and by this point, that is what men such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee also hoped for. Had Lincoln lived, it is very possible that the painfully degrading experience of Reconstruction could have been avoided.
Well, Alexander the Great almost certainly WAS a homosexual.
Lincoln's FIRST Inaugural
Read what I wrote in #6. I completely agree that Lincoln's aggression was illegal and unconstitutional; however, by 1865, the time had come to look forward, and that is what he was trying to do in this speech.
And anyone who does not recognize Lincoln as one of the great presidents just doesn't understand American history, or Lincoln for that matter.
We'll probably never agree on this, and I admit that my outlook would probably be different if I had grown up in the south.
The Congress passed a law preventing the South from selling cotton to Europe, witch was offering a better price than the mills in the north. This is why the war was waged, over money. Slavery was just an emotional excuse to get people fired up. The north would of been happy with cheap cotton for their mills.
Don't forget the underground railroad was underground in the north. They wouldn't be fighting to free the slaves at the same time they were arresting them.
Slavery was rightfully on the way out, with out the war.
bttt
Do you honestly believe that statement?
If so, give us a specific cite for this alleged law that prevented cotton from being exported to Europe.
Yes it is true. The South left the union when the north placed high export taxes on them. The north did not ban slavery until after the war.
It is possible that there is more to history than what you want to believe.
The exact name of the law, I don't recall of the top of my head, but it's there just waiting to be looked up.
Do you really think I would be here lying about something that is easily looked up?
No, I do not think that you are consciously lying, (any more than I think that Senators Kerry and Kennedy are consciously treasonous) but I think that you are repeating something false.
Read the history of secession. There is no question that the secessionists believed that they were protecting the institution of slavery, not protesting tariffs.
I will forward your assertion to an actual historian and repost.
After a little research...
There was no tariff or tax on cotton exports: zip, zero. The tariff only applied to imports, not exports; had had not been raised since 1842, and had been lowered in 1846 and 1857. The Morrill tariff of 1861 did raise the rate, but this was enacted after secession. Some revisionist historians (Beard and Dilorenzo) claim that the Morrill tariff justified secession but few at the time made such a claim.
Rather, secessionists were frank in admitting that preserving slavery was their goal. See:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html
The secessionists knew that secession was treason and would mean war; which is why they started the war themselves at Fort Sumter.
It is interesting that the only ranking Confederate remembered with pride is R.E. Lee, who was morally opposed to slavery, freed his slaves before the war, opposed secession, and remained loyal until his own state seceded.
It is also important to remember that not all southern whites were Confederates, many were opposed to secession but were disenfranchised by the feudalistic voting laws.
This neo-Confederate persistence that secession and civil war were somehow justified is an example of moral confusion. You simply cannot sanctify human slavery or the anti-democratic trends of the antebellum or post-Reconstruction South.
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