Dear cisco34-ga;
Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting question.
By the time President Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural speech
on March 4, 1865 it was already evident that the Union would emerge
victorious from the Civil War. Unlike the temper of his first
inaugural speech, this time the stage was set for Lincoln to summarize
the ravages of war and set the new course for our nation?s future.
Civil War scholar James Tackach, a professor of English at Roger
Williams University, a prolific author of Civil War books and an avid
student of the era explained the significance of Lincoln?s speech this
way in his book LINCOLN'S MORAL VISION: THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS:
"The 701-word Second Inaugural is in many ways the more revealing, if
not the more stylistically pleasing speech?More revealing because the
later speech discloses Lincoln's thinking, at the end of his life, on
key issues with which he had grappled throughout his political career:
slavery, race, the meaning of nationhood, the purpose of government,
the role of God in the Universe."
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI
http://www.upress.state.ms.us/news/lincolns_moral_vision.html
Journalist Noah Brooks, an eyewitness to the speech, published this
description of the events that may have led to the memorable legacy of
the speech, and if true would certainly have moved a great number of
listeners simply by virtue of strange atmospheric anomaly:
"?a roar of applause shook the air, and, again and again repeated,
finally died away on the outer fringe of the throng, like a sweeping
wave upon the shore. Just at that moment the sun, which had been
obscured all day, burst forth in its unclouded meridian splendor, and
flooded the spectacle with glory and with light."
ON THIS DAY. MARCH 4, 1865 -- LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/856539/posts
Aside from that, Lincoln?s speech as considered especially poignant
for a variety of reasons. Some have argued that the speech was almost
theological in content and context. Others have suggested that the
speech was probably more significant in its message than the
Gettysburg Address and that it was in fact the greatest speech of his
Presidency (Lincoln himself is said to have shared this belief about
this particular speech).
Ronald C. White's (LINCOLN'S GREATEST SPEECH - Simon & Schuster, 2002)
points out that this historical moment was an expression of Lincoln's
deepest thoughts on the causes of the Civil War, his ideas about the
course the country should take at the War's conclusion and his
explanation of what God's role in the Civil War was as he understood
and believed it. Lincoln tried to console the nation in his unusually
brief address (only twenty-five sentences) and to convey to the nation
that while hope was once again alive and well, the tragedy and horrors
of war was a burden that had been necessary for the country to carry,
to endure and to survive. Those in attendance, and indeed the world,
did not expect to hear what the President ultimately had to say. They
wanted to hear positive, perhaps even festive rhetoric from the leader
of our nation and hear positive news about the progress and eventual
outcome of the war. I would imagine that some even anticipated a
fiery, in your face, podium pounding pep rally about how the Union was
winning the war and how those who were responsible would be brought to
justice and how every man, woman and child affected by the war would
have their pound of flesh in vengeance. Conversely, Lincoln?s speech
boldly defied expectation and dismissed the questions of war and peace
almost entirely choosing instead to address what was happening ?here
an now?. He believed that American slavery was the nation's sin and
that God Almighty would seek retribution against those who pursued it.
Frederick Douglas, who attended the speech, even noted that Lincoln?s
speech sound more like a sermon that an inaugural address and
applauded the speech as "a sacred effort".
A frail and gaunt looking Lincoln clearly exhausted from his
tumultuous first term as President (civil war, health problems, the
death on one of his sons and his wife reported mental illness) rose to
the podium and in a passive voice, hushed the listening throng of some
forty thousand in attendance. He chose his words carefully, so as not
to inflame the aroused passions the people, many of them soldiers.
After suggesting that the war was unavoidable due to a higher power
(?and war came?) Lincoln revealed the subject of his speech by noting
the paradox that each side sought God's aid against the other, and
concluding, "The Almighty has His own purposes." This was the
rhetorical center of his second inaugural address in which he forced
his listeners to examine the overall righteousness of the war and for
each to determine IN HIS OWN mind who, or what, was to blame.
In the end Lincoln sent stunned his listeners away in virtual silence
with this final statement:
?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.?
In doing so he announced, in almost Biblical fashion and in stark
contrast to the rants of war heard previously on every corner of our
country, that hatred, divisiveness and death were no longer to be the
fashionable focus of our nation and that these should give way to the
new uniform of the day: forgiveness, generosity, and charity.
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OTHER INFORMATION SOURCES
LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
http://www.juntosociety.com/hist_speeches/lincolns2nd.html
A CRITIQUE OF GARY WILLS' ESSAY, 'LINCOLN'S GREATEST SPEECH?"
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_behrens_saw_1/0%2C5312%2C86436-%2C00.html
LINCOLN'S GREATEST SPEECH
http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/books/books009.shtml
LINCOLN'S GREATEST SPEECH: THE SECOND INAUGURAL - BOOK REVIEW
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2004/is_3_49/ai_107760857
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