Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Delivered on March 4, 1865, with Union victory just days away and slavery in its final hours, Lincoln stood before a wounded nation and chose not to celebrate. Instead, he spoke of sadness. In fewer than seven hundred words, the president grappled with a question that haunts every just victory: how should the powerful treat the defeated? He acknowledged that both North and South had erred in failing to foresee the war's staggering cost, that slavery was the offense for which the nation was being taught a 'terrible lesson.' Yet his conclusion was not triumph. It was an invitation to mercy: 'With malice toward none, with charity for all.' Lincoln asked Americans to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for the broken soldier and his widow and orphan, to achieve a lasting peace. The speech is inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial. It has been read at every inauguration since. It endures not because it promised victory, but because it promised something harder: grace in the moment of power.