With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness…

These words open the last paragraph of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered in Washington on 4 March 1865, as the Civil War neared its end. Lincoln has just reflected that both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and that slavery was the cause of the war. If God wills that it continue “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword”, then still “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

Then, instead of triumph, he calls for mercy: to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for “him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan”, and to achieve “a just and lasting peace”. The whole speech is barely 700 words long.

Five weeks later, Lee surrendered at Appomattox; on 14 April, Lincoln was shot, dying the next morning. Frederick Douglass, who heard the address, told Lincoln it had been “a sacred effort”. The text is carved in the Lincoln Memorial.

Second Inaugural Address, Washington, 4 March 1865, 1865

Checked word for word in the work itself.

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