Abraham Lincoln: Second Inaugural Address

About the Author

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president, was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809, to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. His parents were Primitive Baptists, and Lincoln grew up in a home that subscribed to the doctrines of predestination and fatalism. Growing up in Indiana and later moving to Illinois, Lincoln was largely self-educated and had an abiding belief in the ability of an individual to shape his life through aspiration and hard work.

In 1834 Lincoln was elected to the Illinois General Assembly as a Whig and embarked on a career in law. Relocating to Springfield, Lincoln met and married Mary Todd, the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky slave owner. With the demise of the Whig Party, Lincoln moved toward the coalition party formed in opposition to the popular sovereignty doctrines of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. As a Republican, Lincoln ran against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas for Congress. His bid failed but produced the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates. It also provided Lincoln with national renown, which he enhanced when he gave his Cooper Union Address in New York City in February 1860. He used the speech to argue that Republicans were not a party of radical abolitionists but instead merely opposed slavery's expansion—a position, Lincoln stated in his speech, that the nation's founders held. The speech introduced him to eastern audiences and solidified his reputation as a moderate.

In May 1860, Lincoln's supporters secured his nomination for president over the radical William Seward of New York on the third ballot. In a four-way election in November, Lincoln defeated Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat John C. Breckenridge, and Constitutional Unionist John Bell, securing 180 electoral votes and a 900,000-vote margin of victory. Lincoln had not, however, secured a majority of popular votes and was elected by the northern states. In the wake of Lincoln's election, South Carolina seceded from the Union, and the Deep South states followed. In his First Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1861, Lincoln denied the right of secession but pledged that he would not interfere with slavery where it existed. The exigencies of war and Lincoln's evolving views on slavery altered this pledge, and on September 22, 1862, he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. When emancipation went into effect on January 1, 1863, it freed slaves in areas of rebellion.

On November 8, 1864, Lincoln was elected to a second term. When the Thirteenth Amendment passed Congress in January 1865, slavery was outlawed in the United States. When he addressed the nation and the world in his Second Inaugural Address in March 1865, Lincoln sought to find meaning in the war and define the course the nation would pursue upon its conclusion. Lincoln's vision was never fully articulated or realized, and he was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, five days after the Confederate surrender. Lincoln died the following day.