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There is one photograph of Lincoln’s second inaugural address. It had rained for weeks, but crowds jostled
to witness him speak. Crowds pressed
those on the edge of the balcony so they leaned halfway over the railings. On the graded ground beneath the marble
steps, the crowd strains visibly toward the point above, where the president
stood, his body the one thing blurred, as if the world had stopped turning, but
he was passing through.
He spoke briefly, a single handwritten sheet.
“Neither
party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already
attained. 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. 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.’ 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.’
“With malice
toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us
to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the
nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his
widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
He folded the
sheet roughly, like a note of no further interest. He lowered his head and turned from the crowd
to walk back to the White House.
Recently, three more photographs have been found—mislabeled in the
National Archive. Soldiers with bayonets
lined the path through which Lincoln passed.
If you look close, on the left behind a flag, you may see the woman in a
ragged dress who pressed through and plucked his sleeve. He turned and paused to let her speak. We can only imagine her words:
“When the war’s won, your battle will be lost,” she whispered. “In the theater of war, there is no third
wall. You cannot draw a line of fire.”
Lincoln leaned closer, as if her face reminded her of a mourner in
recent dream.
“The last act will be played with a curtain for a winding sheet,
but your enemies shall be hung with the curtain wrapped around their heads.”
“Don’t listen to such
nonsense,” an aid said. Lincoln was too
inclined to predict his own assassination.
He’d joked on the walk over, “Is it time for me to walk to my
scaffold?” He felt that, having drawn
the great nation through this nightmare, could he wake unscathed? Would he lie in peace if he had not paid, as
so many did, with his own blood?
