What is America?
Poli 110J 5.1
And the War came.
Second Inaugural
• Powerlessness of human effort
• Spiritual equality  political humility,
forgiveness
• Spiritual unity of the US
• Critical position on self, politics, the war
Second Inaugural
• 4 years before, there was cause for extented
remark. “Now, at the expiration of four years,
during which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point and
phase of the great contest which still absorbs
the nation, little that is new could be
presented.”
– The binding power of history over the present
Second Inaugural
• “The progress of our arms, upon which all else
chiefly depends, is as well known to the public
as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high
hope for the future, no prediction in regard to
it is ventured.”
– The present is uncertain, the future utterly
opaque
• The limits on human action
Second Inaugural
• “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago,
all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending
civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While
the inaugural address was being delivered from this
place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without
war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to
destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union,
and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war; but one of them would make war
rather than let the nation survive; and the other would
accept war rather than let it perish. And the war
came.”
Second Inaugural
• ‘All’ or ‘both’ said four times: emphasis on
fundamental national unity
• Passive voice: ‘While the inaugural address
was being delivered’
• War emphasized, it is inevitable: ‘war’ said 7
times (9 if you count ‘it’)
• ‘And the war came.’
– abolitionist Wendell Phillips, January 8, 1852:
“Revolutions are not made; they come. A
revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It
comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far
back.”
– But for Lincoln there is nothing natural here. It
comes like lightning out of the sky.
Second Inaugural
• “All knew that this [slave] interest was,
somehow, the cause of the war. To
strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this
interest was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union; while the
government claimed no right to do more than
to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”
– Slavery the war’s cause
– South more responsible
Second Inaugural
• But the plans of all have failed:
• “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.”
Second Inaugural
• Neither/neither/each: the sections are joined
in their failure
• Lincoln includes himself in this failure: his
plans have had results that he never predicted
• The results are ‘fundamental’, astounding.
The US has been transformed.
– Though he led, he was not in control any more
than anyone else
Second Inaugural
• “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 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 not
be judged”
Second Inaugural
• Shift to the present, here and now
• Again, emphasis on unity
• Genesis 3:23 “In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
– The curse of God for disobedience
– Slaveowners disobey God’s will
Second Inaugural
• Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not
judged”
– From Sermon on the Mount
– Suggests both the mercy and judgment of God
– While the South bears more responsibility, the
North is not without flaw. Universality of sin
means that a people should always first criticize
themselves.
• Equality and forgiveness
Second Inaugural
• “The prayers of both could not be answered;
that of neither has been answered fully. The
Almighty has his own purposes.”
•
•
•
•
God the major actor in the drama of the war
Both sides could not win
Neither side has truly gotten what it wanted
God’s will over all history, distinct from human plans
and desires
– Humans rendered equal in this way
Second Inaugural
• ‘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!’
• Matt. 18:7
• God’s will controls history, nothing can go
against the will of God.
• Yet individuals remain responsible for their
sins
Second Inaugural
• If we shall suppose that American Slavery is once
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 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?
Second Inaugural
• “American” Slavery was
– An offence to God
– Allowed by God
– Willed by God to end now
• North and South EQUALLY guilty before God,
though not before humans
– Divine justice vs. human justice
– Perfection a dichotomous variable
Second Inaugural
• “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily
pass away.”
– Humans can do nothing to alter God’s will. They
must humble themselves and pray that God’s
mercy is greater than his justice
– Distilling moral & religious meaning from the
bewildering events and destruction of the War
Second Inaugural
• Shared moral community of Americans
– Both guilty in their shared failure to uphold
equality
– Both powerless to resist the will of God
• Transcendence of God
– Not some tribal deity
– His justice and purposes are very much different
from those of humans.
Second Inaugural
• 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 with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago,
so still must it be said ‘the judgments of the
Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’
Second Inaugural
• The US is guilty enough to deserve destruction
– Slavery a mortal transgression against American
obligation to equality
– Affirms the perfection of divine justice over human
claims to justice
– Though the justice of God is inscrutable, it is
nonetheless perfectly just
• “three thousand years ago”: these ideas predate
the US, & may outlast them by as much
• Just as the war is not the product of human
agency, neither will be its end
Second Inaugural
• The judgments of the Lord
– Psalm 19
– Lincoln must somehow act ethically
• within a context beyond his comprehension
• with outcomes that are impossible to firmly predict
• and be judged by the inscrutable mind of God
according to standards that he cannot fully understand
•  humility as political good
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”
– Forgiveness motivated by recognition of moral
equality
– Act firmly in the right, as God gives us to see it
• Moral conviction & moral humility
Second Inaugural
• “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 a just and a lasting peace, among
ourselves, and with all nations.”
– Atonement between North & South
– Atonement between America & its God
– Political humility: don’t strive for utopia, strive for a
better world
– Equality demonstrated in a commitment to alleviated
suffering
Second Inaugural
• Men are not flattered by being shown that
there has been a difference of purpose
between the Almighty and them. To deny it,
however, in this case, is to deny that there is a
God governing the world.
– If God is always on your side, is he really there?
Second Inaugural
• It is a truth which I thought needed to be told;
and as whatever there is of humiliation there
is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought
others might afford for me to tell it.
– Why does the humiliation fall most directly on
him?