Second Inaugural Address | Page 3

territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict
might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each
looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and
astounding. 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 sweat 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
offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man
by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American
slavery is one of those offenses 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 offense came, shall
we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the
believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we

hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether."
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.

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