LAD #15: Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, at the start of his second term as President. Secessionists in the American Civil War were about to have victory, and slavery had been effectively done with. Licoln did not speak of victory, he spoke of loss, guilt, and sin. Some people see this speech as a defense of his approach to Reconstruction, in which he went to avoid strict treatment of the defeated South by reminding his listeners of how wrong both sides had been in imagining what lay before them when the war began, in all actuality, four years ago. Lincoln balanced that rejection of victory, however, with a recognition of the evil of slavery, which he described in the most concrete terms possible. The statement "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan" was later adopted by the Veterans Administration as its mission statement.