The Greatest Presidential Speech
On this day, in 1809, the 16th and perhaps greatest president of the United States was born. Abraham Lincoln would be the president to guide the United States of America through that time of bloody turmoil we know as the War Between the States. At the west end of the National Mall stands the Lincoln Memorial, honoring this great man. The south side chamber contains the words to perhaps the most famous speech in U. S. History, the Gettysburg Address. As powerful and poignant as that address is, there is perhaps a more powerful and important address inscribed upon the walls of the north side chamber - Lincon’s 2nd Inaugural Address. In my estimation, this short oration may be the greatest presidential speech ever delivered.
On March 4, 1865, Lincolnd delivered the second shortest inaugural speech in history. Some were still arriving when the president concluded his 6-7 minute speech. Historian Don E. Fehrenbacher wrote:
In the Second Inaugural, [Lincoln] revealed his most deeply held convictions to a national audience in a way that no other president has done throughout all of American history. In this religious belief, Lincoln had found strength to persevere, and at the time of his Second Inaugural when it was apparent that the Union cause would eventually be won, he publicly acknowledged its tenet that the final outcome had been foreordained all along.
Licoln’s second inaugural address if filled with biblical and theological language. Over the course of 701 words Lincoln mentions God fourteen times, quotes the Bible four times and invokes prayer three times. Humility permeates this address. In the words of Lincoln Biographer, David Herbert Donald:
As the day for Lincoln’s second inauguration drew near, Americans wondered what their sixteenth president would say about the Civil War. Would Lincoln guide the nation toward “Reconstruction”? What about the slaves? They had been emancipated, but what about the matter of suffrage? When Lincoln finally stood before his fellow countrymen on March 4, 1865, and had only 703 words to share, the American public was stunned. The President had not offered the North a victory speech, nor did he excoriate the South for the sin of slavery. Instead, he called the whole country guilty of the sin and pleaded for reconciliation and unity. In this compelling account, noted historian Ronald C. White Jr. shows how Lincoln’s speech was initially greeted with confusion and hostility by many in the Union; commended by the legions of African Americans in attendance, abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass among them; and ultimately appropriated by his assassin John Wilkes Booth forty-one days later.
I conclude with an excerpt from this address:
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 seat 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?