365 Days of Facts

Abraham Lincoln was eloquent in many settings, but perhaps none more than his Second Inaugural Address: “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.”

Second Inaugural Address

Lincoln presided over the nation’s most terrible crisis.

The Civil War began one month after he took office and ended five days before he was assasinated.

It was more bitter and protracted than anyone had predicted, costing more than 600,000 lives.

In Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered just over a month before his death, he spoke about the war as he had come to understand it. The unspeakable savagery that had already lasted 4 years, he believed, was nothing short of God’s own punishment for the sins of human slavery.

In the closing words of his speech he offered the immortal words of reconciliation and healing that are carved in the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital. He set a tone for his plan for the nation’s Reconstruction and reconciliation.