03/04/2024
Just when you think we’re coming apart at the seams; when someone tells you, “We’ve never been more divided, as a country than we are today!” Remember Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address… yes, we HAVE been more divided, but in every instance, throughout our history, while people were saying, “If ________ is elected, our Grand Experiment is over, that has been said every 4 years, since 1800! So, be of good cheer - we’ve gotten thru it before & we’ll get thru it again…
in 1861 and 1865, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office. He swore to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." As is customary, Lincoln also gave speeches. In the long list of Lincoln's orations, his inaugural addresses are quite unique, at the beginning and end of the Civil War. Let's compare the two!
The last lines of the First Inaugural:
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
The last lines of the Second Inaugural:
"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."
Image📸: Alexander Gardner's photograph of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (LOC)
