President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (1861) and Second Inaugural Address (1865) examined the same issues but from two entirely different perspectives. The 1861 speech was intended to encourage the Southern states to remain in the Union rather than secede, so that civil war could be averted, while the 1865 speech was given when that war had already been in effect for more than three years, resulting in considerable death and destruction. Both speeches considered the past as well as the future, but, like bookends, their focus was on the intervening Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln became president in 1861 in the midst of a national crisis concerning slavery and states’ rights versus the Federal government. Thus, his First Inaugural Address defined potential anarchy as the true crisis. The secession of the contiguous Southern states would set a precedent for the future, as well as causing difficulties concerning treaties, trade, and similar issues. In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln defined the current crisis as the need to end the war and bring the states back together. Large numbers of men had already died or received serious wounds during the battles. It was time to think about how to stop the fighting.

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address expressed his viewpoint concerning the practice of slavery in the South and the requirement that escaped slaves who reached non-slave states should be returned to their former owners according to the Constitution. Lincoln stated that he had no disagreement with those two provisions, and therefore, the South had nothing to fear from his presidency (several states had indicated that if Lincoln won the presidency, they would secede). What he did contend with was the idea that states in the South, if they felt threatened, had the power to secede from the Union and set up their own country. Instead, he believed that the majority should rule, as stated in the Constitution. His goal was to prevent the Union from breaking apart.

When Lincoln was reelected in 1864, the Civil War had already been raging for three and a half years and over 700,000 people were dead. At that point, the problems he warned about in his first address had already occurred — the Union was broken, the South had started a war, and the North had responded in kind. His goal, therefore, was to bring the country back together. He prepared the way for re-joining the North and the South into the previous 34-state United States of America with his famous words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” This presented his idea of forgiveness on both sides so that they could work together to improve the future.

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address was predictive, while his Second Inaugural Address was responsive. In 1861, Lincoln realized that he needed to appeal to the leaders of the South not to break up the United States, which was a great country. He tried to convince them that he had no intention of ending slavery in the South and that, instead, he merely wanted to keep it from spreading. He quoted from the Constitution regarding escaped slaves, and reiterated his support for that stipulation as well as other provisions of the Constitution.

In the Second Inaugural Address (1865), which was much shorter than the first, Lincoln quoted the Bible more than once (e.g. “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether”). He appealed to the two sides’ sense of commonality — “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” By forgiving and forgetting, the two sides could become one country again and begin to grow and thrive once more.