Abraham Lincoln’s best-known speech is the Gettysburg Address. My favorite is his second inaugural address. It was March 4, 1865, one month before Lee’s surrender to Grant and Lincoln’s assassination. The country was exhausted after the bitter divisions and bloodshed.  623,000 Americans died fighting each other — one out of eleven of service age. The American death toll would surpass World War 1, 2, Korea, and Vietnam combined. 

Behind him was the new iron dome of the Capital building and 26 year old John Wilkes Booth.  In front of him was Frederick Douglas, the articulate African-American abolitionist leader and reformer. The speech is 703 words, 25 sentences, 4 paragraphs. 505 words are of one syllable. It lasted 6-7 minutes and those delayed by rain and mud missed it. 

He began the first half of the speech citing the one four years ago — before the war. He can’t predict the end of the war after so many predictions that “absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation.”

About the war: “ALL dreaded it, ALL sought to avert it, both sides deprecated” (expressed disapproval of) war. Yet there were differences shown by antithesis: 

first inaugural——-insurgent agents 

devoted to save the union without war——-seeking to destroy it without war

accept war rather than let it perish——–make war rather than let it survive

After alliteration in each sentence: directed, dreaded, delivered, devoted, destroy, dissolve, divide, deprecated; the last one changes to AND THE WAR CAME. And the war came; war is beyond our control to manage it.

June 29, 2008 was my fifth healing sermon after I returned from my nine-month disability (gestation?) to the same church as a changed pastor. It was the Sunday before the 4^th of July. I used the book I’d read by Ronald J. White to preach about “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech”. The reason was how the speech ended more than how it began. I’ll share the ending tomorrow.

In case you’re still reading, here’s the first half of the text of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address….

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. 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 attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. 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.

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 inaugeral [sic] 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 dissole [sic] 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.