-60 POINTS!!!!- Reread paragraph 3 of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Then, explain Lincoln’s views about slavery. Cite one
detail from the text to support your explanation.
Paragraph 3:
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern
part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.
All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To
strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for
which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the
government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude
or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that
the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict
itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result
less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray
to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may
seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance
in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but “let
us judge not, that we be not judged.”1
The prayers of both could not
be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty
has his own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it
must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the
offense cometh.”2
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of
those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but
which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills
to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible
war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we
discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the
believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope,
fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily
pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled
by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 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 judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.”
