It was a large and hopeful crowd that awaited the Second Inaugural of President Lincoln. Historian Allan Nevins wrote: “This Inauguration Day was vastly different from that of March 4, 1861, when people awaited the words of the newly elected President on the crisis momentarily descending on the nation..”2 The end of the war – rather than the beginning of it – was clearly in sight. After Vice President Andrew Johnson took the oath of office in the Senate chamber and gave a rambling, drunken speech, officials proceeded to the east front of the Capitol for the presidential inauguration. A rainy and stormy morning turned to bright sunlight just as the President took the podium. “As Lincoln rose, he put on and adjusted his steel-rimmed eyeglasses. He held in his left hand his Second Inaugural Address, printed in two columns. The handwritten draft of the address had been set in type. The galley proof was clipped and pasted in an order to indicate pauses for emphasis and breathing,” wrote Ronald C. White, Jr., in Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural.3
Viewed by many as Lincoln’s greatest speech, this address declared that slavery was the war’s essential cause and that the war was an expiation of the national sin of slavery. Speaking transcendently to history, President Lincoln explained the Civil War—its cause, its character, and its immediate consequences. Though he wanted to be clear that slavery caused “this mighty scourge of war,” he ended on a hopeful note of binding up the nation’s wounds. His message of “charity for all” diverted some Republican desires for harsh retribution against the South.
Censors infringe(violate) the right of freedom when they hinder(restrict) spoken words, printed matter, symbolic messages, freedom of association, and lots more.
