A Portion of Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, Including the Mystic Chords of Memory Segment
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern states that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension -- Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1851.
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. (It's worth remembering that, in the beginning, President Lincoln was much more interested in preserving the Union than in freeing slaves -- though that first desire would eventually make the second necessary.)
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot do this.
(Unlike more famous and eloquent speeches, Lincoln turned his first inaugural into more of a plea to the nation's Southern brethren to return to the fold, but he made it clear that he would defend the Union by force. Most of Lincoln's language in the first inaugural is more straightforward than eloquent -- until the end.)
in conclusion Lincoln said:
"In 'your' hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You' have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."
Then, Lincoln stepped into history, including literary history:
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
The next month, civil war would come to the USA.
For the next four years, Lincoln led the nation through what remains its bloodiest conflict, one that forever changed the USA, and, not incidentally, produced some of our greatest state papers on the meanings of freedom and democracy -- among them the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln's second inaugural address on March 4, 1865.
Lincoln was killed the month after his second inaugural, but the United States would live on.
It would live through Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, populism, imperialism, progressivism, a world war, a Great Depression, a second world war, a Cold War, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, liberalism, conservatism, the computer age, globalization, and, yes, the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American president.
May it continue to live through the challenges of the 21st Century and may it continue to represent with integrity Lincoln's "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..."
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern states that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension -- Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1851.
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. (It's worth remembering that, in the beginning, President Lincoln was much more interested in preserving the Union than in freeing slaves -- though that first desire would eventually make the second necessary.)
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot do this.
(Unlike more famous and eloquent speeches, Lincoln turned his first inaugural into more of a plea to the nation's Southern brethren to return to the fold, but he made it clear that he would defend the Union by force. Most of Lincoln's language in the first inaugural is more straightforward than eloquent -- until the end.)
in conclusion Lincoln said:
"In 'your' hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You' have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."
Then, Lincoln stepped into history, including literary history:
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
The next month, civil war would come to the USA.
For the next four years, Lincoln led the nation through what remains its bloodiest conflict, one that forever changed the USA, and, not incidentally, produced some of our greatest state papers on the meanings of freedom and democracy -- among them the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln's second inaugural address on March 4, 1865.
Lincoln was killed the month after his second inaugural, but the United States would live on.
It would live through Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, populism, imperialism, progressivism, a world war, a Great Depression, a second world war, a Cold War, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, liberalism, conservatism, the computer age, globalization, and, yes, the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American president.
May it continue to live through the challenges of the 21st Century and may it continue to represent with integrity Lincoln's "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..."
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