LAD #16 Lincoln's Second Inaugural

The opening to Lincoln's Address states that he does not have much to present to the American people. He says that the issues of the nation are already widely known so it would make little difference if he were to reiterate all his views that he has already during his first term. In his speech he reminds the people that only four years ago, the attention of the nation was "anxiously directed to an impending civil war". "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 became." He said that one eighth of the American population was composed of slaves and their desire for freedom tore the nation in two. He illustrates the horrors of civil war, but he ends his speech with a unifying burst of patriotism. " With malice toward none, with charity for all, with the 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 his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." The time has come for unity for the United States.