Yet, if god wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil s
hall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgements of the lord are true and righteous altogether. Which theme does this sentence develop?
"Just 701 words long, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address took only six or seven minutes to deliver, yet contains many of the most memorable phrases in American political oratory. The speech contained neither gloating nor rejoicing. Rather, it offered Lincoln’s most profound reflections on the causes and meaning of the war. The “scourge of war,” he explained, was best understood as divine punishment for the sin of slavery, a sin in which all Americans, North as well as South, were complicit. It describes a national moral debt that had been created by the “bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil,” and ends with a call for compassion and reconciliation."
