2. Second Inaugural Powerlessness of human effort
Spiritual equality  political humility, forgiveness
Moral preconditions for democracy
Spiritual unity of the US
Critical position on self, politics, the war
March 4, 1865

3. Second Inaugural
4 years before, there was cause for extended remark. “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 nation, little that is new could be presented.”
The binding power of history over the present
“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.”
The present is uncertain, the future utterly opaque
The limits on human action

4. Second Inaugural
“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, insurgent 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.”

5. Second Inaugural
‘All’ or ‘both’ said four times: emphasis on fundamental national unity
Passive voice: ‘While the inaugural address was being delivered’
War emphasized, it is inevitable: ‘war’ said 7 times (9 if you count ‘it’)

6. Second Inaugural ‘And the war came.’
abolitionist Wendell Phillips, January 8, 1852: “Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.”
But for Lincoln there is nothing natural here. It comes like lightning out of the sky.

7. Second Inaugural
“All knew that this [slave] 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; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”
Slavery the war’s cause
South more responsible
But the plans of all have failed:
“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.”

8. Second Inaugural
Neither/neither/each: the sections are joined in their failure
Lincoln includes himself in this failure: his plans have had results that he never predicted
The results are ‘fundamental’, astounding. The US has been transformed.
Though he led, he was not in control any more than anyone else

9. Second Inaugural
“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 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 not be judged”
Shift to the present, here and now
Again, emphasis on unity
Genesis 3:23 “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
The curse of God for disobedience
Slaveowners disobey God’s will

10. Second Inaugural Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged”
From Sermon on the Mount
Suggests both the mercy and judgment of God
While the South bears more responsibility, the North is not without flaw. Universality of sin means that a people should always first criticize themselves.
Equality and forgiveness

11. Second Inaugural
“The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”
God the major actor in the drama of the war
Both sides could not win
Neither side has truly gotten what it wanted
God’s will over all history, distinct from human plans and desires
Humans rendered equal in this way

12. Second Inaugural
‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!’
Matt. 18:7
God’s will controls history, nothing can go against the will of God.
Yet individuals remain responsible for their sins

13. Second Inaugural
“If we shall suppose that American Slavery is once of those offences 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 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?”

14. Second Inaugural “American” Slavery was
An offence to God
Allowed by God
Willed by God to end now
North and South equally guilty before God, though not before humans
Divine justice vs. human justice
Perfection a dichotomous variable

15. Second Inaugural
“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”
Humans can do nothing to alter God’s will. They must humble themselves and pray that God’s mercy is greater than his justice
Distilling moral & religious meaning from the bewildering events and destruction of the War
Shared moral community of Americans
Both guilty in their shared failure to uphold equality
Both powerless to resist the will of God
Transcendence of God
Not some tribal deity
His justice and purposes are very much different from those of humans.

16. Second Inaugural
“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 must it be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”

17. Second Inaugural The US is guilty enough to deserve destruction
Slavery a mortal transgression against American obligation to equality
Affirms the perfection of divine justice over human claims to justice
Though the justice of God is inscrutable, it is nonetheless perfectly just
“three thousand years ago”: these ideas predate the US, & may outlast them by as much
Just as the war is not the product of human agency, neither will be its end

18. Second Inaugural The judgments of the Lord Psalm 19
Lincoln must somehow act ethically
within a context beyond his comprehension
with outcomes that are impossible to firmly predict
and be judged by the inscrutable mind of God according to standards that he cannot fully understand
 humility as political good

19. Second Inaugural
“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”
Forgiveness motivated by recognition of moral equality
Act firmly in the right, as God gives us to see it
Moral conviction & moral humility

20. Second Inaugural
“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 a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Atonement between North & South
Atonement between America & its God
Political humility: don’t strive for utopia, strive for a better world
Equality demonstrated in a commitment to alleviated suffering
Care for widows & orphans a condition of minimal justice in the Bible

21. Second Inaugural March 15, 1865
“Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world.”
If God is always on your side, is he really there?
“It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever there is of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.”
Why does the humiliation fall most directly on him?

23. Frederick Douglass “Friends and Fellow-Citizens”
“We are here to express, as best we may, by appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high, and preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.”
“It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.”

24. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans.
He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race.
To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation.”

25. “I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity.”
“It was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.”

26. “I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race.
Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict.
His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen.”

27. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr
Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery....
“He was willing, while the South was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go.”

28. Long-term outcomes of the Civil War
Federal government decisively rendered superior to state governments
Blacks being citizens, racial equality becomes civil rights issue
Necessities of war lead to dramatic expansion, bureaucratization of federal gov’t
Push to homogenize law across states
Expanded power of corporations, closer ties to government