Malice Toward None: Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Read online

  Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s widow and child. His last words to her as he died were, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”

  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.

  McLean home at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in whose parlor General Lee surrendered to General Grant, bringing the Civil War to an end, April 9, 1865.

  Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

  Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

  In 1913 the government held a fiftieth anniversary reunion at Gettysburg battlefield. Fifty thousand survivors of both North and South attended in brotherhood and friendship, thanks in part to the memory and prayers of Abraham Lincoln.

  “The Blue and the Gray at Gettysburg, Assembly Tent” (fiftieth-anniversary reunion, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1913).

  Cover of Blue and Gray magazine, March 1893.

  My Comrades of the Confederate Army, my friends and veterans of the Federal Army . . . I am filled with emotion as I look upon survivors of the armies of the Civil War and remember that here, at Gettysburg, was fought one of the greatest and most decisive battles of the Civil War. We are not here with battle flags, charging brigades, roaring cannon, rattling musketry, and dead and dying soldiers, but we are here with friendship and fraternity, good will and glorious peace. A half century has made those who wore the Blue and those who wore the Gray stand together as friends, and behold the Bow of Peace and promise in the sky, and look with pleasure upon the flag of our country, as it presents the stars of Re-United States and represents reunited people. . . . While those of us who were soldiers when the battle of Gettysburg was fought will always remember the glory and the gloom of that period, we may well thank God, today, that the benediction of peace and reconciliation spreads over our great Republic, and we realize that the immortal words now most conspicuous are, “One country, one constitution, one flag, and one destiny.”

  —James B. McCreary, governor of Kentucky, remarks at the Gettysburg Reunion, 1913

  The Second Inaugural Address in Abraham Lincoln’s own handwriting. It covered only four pages of copy paper.

  Lincoln did not read the address from this handwritten copy but from a printed galley of two columns.

  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.

  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 [sic] 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.

  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 offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one 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 to those by whom the offence 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 bondman’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.”

  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.

  Visitors to the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., see two of Abraham Lincoln’s magnificent speeches carved in full—the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address.

  JACK E. LEVIN is the author of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Illustrated. An artist whose portrait of Ronald Reagan hangs in the Reagan Library, he is also a small-businessman and the owner of a Philadelphia area art gallery. He lives in Florida with his wife of sixty-two years, Norma.

  MARK R. LEVIN is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Ameritopia and Liberty and Tyranny. He is a nationally syndicated talk-radio host and president of Landmark Legal Foundation.

  Visit www.marklevinshow.com.

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  PICTURE CREDITS

  All images not listed below are credited to Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

  Page 2 Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization (March 18, 1865), Hagley Civil War Collection, 20100721_harpers_00002.tif, Hagley Museum and Library

  Page 19 Library of Congress, Manuscript Division

  Page 30 British Library/Robana via Getty Images

  Page 35 © Tim Shaffer/Reuters/Corbis


  Page 40 Private Collection/Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library

  Page 40 © Collection of the New-York Historical Society, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library

  Page 41 Private Collection/Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library

  Pages 44–45 National Archives and Records Administration, 111-b-5304

  Page 48 © Corbis

  Page 49 Virginia Military Institute Archives

  Page 50 © AP Images

  Page 51 The New York Times, April 10, 1865, front page

  Page 52 RG-25, Records of Special Commissions, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives (both)

  Pages 54–55 Library of Congress, Manuscript Division

  Page 61 © Fotog/Tetra Images/Corbis

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  ISBN 978-1-4767-8426-7

  ISBN 978-1-4767-8427-4 (ebook)

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Foreword

  Malice Toward None

  Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

  About Jack E. Levin and Mark R. Levin

  Picture Credits