9 ms·

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln

61 points by js2 6y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
In my mind, there are only two indispensable Presidents without whom there really would no be a United States of America: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had the rare traits of dogged determination, clear headed pragmatism, and a rare humility that allowed him to do the seemingly impossible and hold the Union together while still ending slavery. Truly, one of the great people of history.
- acwan93 6y ago
  Franklin Roosevelt? While it's debated on whether the New Deal policies actually lifted the United States out of the Great Depression, it's undeniable that a mix of the New Deal and his leadership during World War II propelled the country to becoming a global superpower.
  - kitotik 6y ago
    One way to measure the impact of the New Deal, whether or not it caused the end of the depression, is to look at all the time, money, and political effort that has been and continues to be spent to systemically dismantle everything it put in place. It basically defined the agenda and focus of the Republican Party from then until now.
    - splintercell 6y ago
      Most of the New Deal has been struck down as unconstitutional. I don't think the idea that there could be a special police force by NRA which would walk around Manhattan and watch for anybody who's lights are still on after the twilight , knock at the door and tell them that they are violating the NRA policies by working past the allocated quota, is constitutional. It was the right thing to do by Supreme Court.
      - kitotik 6y ago
        Haha. That’s a funny but minor example. I was referring more to the socialist aspects - taxing corporations and wealthy individuals, the social security program, unemployment and welfare, workers rights, financial regulations, etc. My opinion is that FDR didn’t really love any of those things, but saw a potential for widespread social unrest, and tried to mitigate that by working out a deal with the oligarchy. This lead to the terms “liberal” and “conservative” defining the 2 parties and seems to have laid the groundwork of the extreme bifurcation we experience today.
        splintercell 6y ago
        > My opinion is that FDR didn’t really love any of those things, but saw a potential for widespread social unrest, and tried to mitigate that by working out a deal with the oligarchy. How do you justify him fighting with Supreme Court and planning to pack it? That has to be one of the most unethical power grabs any President could go for? What you're describing above sounds like a mythology being attempted to be built around him.
        kitotik 6y ago
        I wasn’t intending to imply that he or the new deal were good or bad, just how I interpreted the history. I’ve yet to find a US president that I would classify as benevolent, honest, or worthy of exaltation.
  - briandear 6y ago
    His internment of the Japanese should not be forgotten. It could also be argued that he empowered the Soviet Union. FDR has a mixed record in my mind. He also maintained a segregated military that Truman ultimately integrated in 1948.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    While FDR was instrumental in the USA becoming the superpower that it became, even without FDR, the United States would still have been a world power (due to its combination large population, high degree of industrialization with lots of manufacturing, and lots of natural resources) and would still have continued to have a democratic government. Even without FDR, the USA while maybe not developing into the superpower that it did, would still have been recognizable as the USA. Without Washington or Lincoln, the USA would either not exist or been completely unrecognizable.
- jariel 6y ago
  Yes there would be no USA without him, but as a foreigner, reading that, he seems like a brutal federalist. He literally says 'we don't want bloodshed, but hey, the constitution says you cannot secede, so there will be bloodshed if you try to'. We have several secessionist movements around the world: Canada, Spain, UK (Scotland/Northern Ireland), EU (Brexit) - to name just a few. Literally the 'land of the free', a new country, with a lot of devolved power ... but 'if you try to leave we're going to invade you'. It seems really inconsistent with democratic principles. Though histories and legalities are quite different, I was pretty shocked by his stark position. His tone is not aggressive, but his position is pretty hardcore absolutist.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Secession in the case of the American South was not a clear-cut case of everyone in a region wanting to live in their own country. The owners of the large slave-based plantations wanted to secede, and since they were the wealthy political elites, they made it happen. However, poorer white farmers who owned no slaves were either ambivalent about secession or outright pro-Union, and of course the black slave population weren't enthusiastic about the Confederate elites' aims. So, Lincoln was advocating for the large Southern population that did not want to divide the Union, not quashing regional democratic aspirations.
    - jariel 6y ago
      So that's a good point but - "was not a clear-cut case of everyone in a region wanting to live in their own country" Neither was the American revolution in the first place. Where was the referendum? What would have been the results? Would the secessionists even have won? Lincoln maybe didn't live in a time where he had a lot of historical examples to follow, fair enough, but the argument that 'some didn't want to separate' doesn't quite cut it fully because that's pretty much a pervasive context.
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    Public pronouncements like this are only nominally statements of the speaker's beliefs; they are intended to persuade people to support the speaker's future policies. Few abolitonists felt that secession solved anything, and many would regard it as creating a rogue state. These people were already behind Lincoln's policies. The people who he had to persuade were abolitionists who worried whether they had the right to act, those who just wanted some way to make the issue someone else's problem, and those in the North who didn't find it troubling (and if he could persuade some of those who were pro-slavery, so much the better.)
empath75 6y ago
What to a slave is the 4th of July? https://youtu.be/NBe5qbnkqoM https://youtu.be/NBe5qbnkqoM
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  for those who prefer text: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/ https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to... Although I largely concur with Douglass, he does seem a bit disingenuous about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise in discussing the Constitution. Further reading indicates that's a deliberate stance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass#Return_to_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass#Return_to_t... "To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day." (that day being 1852)
canada_dry 6y ago
> We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Yet here we are... the US two party system continues to devolve into a bitter no-holds-barred us-against-them battle. There are so many other foes - both internal and external - that need addressing, yet in-fighting is weakening the nation's foundation while the real enemies are rubbing their hands in glee.
- antipaul 6y ago
  I sometimes wonder if today’s political divisions are substantially deeper than in the past. Infighting seems to go back to the founding fathers. So is today the end of democracy? Or standard operating practice?
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    We had a civil war. I would be very interested to see an analysis try and argue that we are more divided now than when we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people.
    - briandear 6y ago
      > we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people. That actually wasn’t why the civil war was started. It wasn’t until later in the war that emancipation was a goal. Slavery was legal in DC for the first year of the Civil War.
      - skybrian 6y ago
        This is more complicated. Southern states seceded over slavery. They put it in writing when they seceded and it was in the Confederate constitution. Although Lincoln attempted to get them not to secede with conciliatory gestures, they assumed the worst of the candidate of the Republican party, because it was the anti-slavery party. Although the stated goal of Lincoln and the US government at the beginning of the war was to preserve the union, the underlying north-south conflict that turned into a war was about slavery. You might argue, though, that it wasn't originally about ending slavery in states where it was established, because few people had a goal of doing that before the war. (Abolitionists did, but not as a practical, near-term goal.) The most serious political fights were about whether to expand slavery to more places, and here the South wouldn't take no for an answer - they not only wanted to preserve it, they wanted to expand it. And that was still about slavery. Yes, it was all really weird and horrible.
audessuscest 6y ago
Yale should change his name.
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  That's the best idea I've heard! Rather than Yale changing its name, change Elihu Yale's name to something else, like Elihu Shitbag. Yale can get abstracted out and maybe become an acronym. Young Angry Leftwing Elitists, or something. (Class of '03 -- I love Yale)
082349872349872 6y ago
Context: 24.12.1860: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_Causes_Which_Induce_and_Justify_the_Secession_of_South_Carolina_from_the_Federal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_C... 08.02.1861: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Constitution_of_the_Confederate_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Constitution_of_th... 04.03.1861: First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln 12.04.1861: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
dr_dshiv 6y ago
"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Damn, Lincoln! Makes me think we need those statues of Jefferson Davis (upside-down, for my taste) -- because now it seems clear that if the south hadn't seceded, emancipation would not have happened for decades if at all
- hef19898 6y ago
  Yeah, seems the Confederacy was the in itself the cause of tis own downfall. Edit: As a what-if question, where would the US have stood in that case during the two World Wars?
  - dr_dshiv 6y ago
    It is terrifying to think about what present day slavery would look like if it had been further enshrined as a right of the southern states. Or, if Lincoln had simply allowed succession.
    - vimy 6y ago
      https://youtu.be/Uyz-AyAOLek https://youtu.be/Uyz-AyAOLek From: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The Brazilian example suggests decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil#The_end_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil#The_end_of_s... (but I have to admit my knowledge of Brasil doesn't extend much past Xuxa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OxJKFEofL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OxJKFEofL0 )
- mpalmer 6y ago
  Not defending Lincoln as an abolitionist; he definitely was not. But the statement was couched pretty heavily in what he was legally allowed to do as President. He seems extremely careful not to take a position that would inflame one side over the other - he calls attention to the process for making laws and amending the Constitution but takes care to mention he doesn't have any amendments he would put forward himself. Difficult position to be in for a president. There was no quick, legal path to the righteous thing - free all enslaved people.
protomyth 6y ago
I've found his Second Inaugural to be his more interesting https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page=transcript https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page... The first sounds like a man trying to hold it together by word with some appeasements.
- js2 6y ago
  Yes, but it's well known. It's inscribed on the inside wall of the Lincoln Memorial, along with the Gettysburg address. I had never read his first inaugural address before. I'm 48.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    You really need to frame the speech with some understanding of the electoral breakdown of the election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidentia...
- jhbadger 6y ago
  Perhaps, but the "malice towards none" part is disappointing. Many people claim that the problem we have today (with the Confederacy still having its supporters today) is a result of Lincoln's assassination stopping his work, but the Second Inaugural suggests that even had he lived he wouldn't have been interested in putting Davis, Lee, etc. on trial for treason.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    No, the "malice towards none" is an appeal to the better angels of humanity. Frankly, if more people lived by that last paragraph of the speech, the world would be a considerably better place. He was looking forward, not back.
JoBrad 6y ago
The last paragraph of this speech is perhaps the best appeal to our better selves a US politician has ever made, in my opinion. The way he seamlessly shifts from acknowledging the current madness to a lofty call-to-greatness gives me chills every time I read it. > I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
7532yahoogmail 6y ago
Op - thanks for finding and posting. I enjoyed reading it, and was pleased to see evidence intelligent rhetoric with heart. Now at this point Lincoln said he would not stop slavery -- that would change though.

61 points by js2 6y ago

In my mind, there are only two indispensable Presidents without whom there really would no be a United States of America: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had the rare traits of dogged determination, clear headed pragmatism, and a rare humility that allowed him to do the seemingly impossible and hold the Union together while still ending slavery. Truly, one of the great people of history.

acwan93 6y ago
Franklin Roosevelt? While it's debated on whether the New Deal policies actually lifted the United States out of the Great Depression, it's undeniable that a mix of the New Deal and his leadership during World War II propelled the country to becoming a global superpower.
- kitotik 6y ago
  One way to measure the impact of the New Deal, whether or not it caused the end of the depression, is to look at all the time, money, and political effort that has been and continues to be spent to systemically dismantle everything it put in place. It basically defined the agenda and focus of the Republican Party from then until now.
  - splintercell 6y ago
    Most of the New Deal has been struck down as unconstitutional. I don't think the idea that there could be a special police force by NRA which would walk around Manhattan and watch for anybody who's lights are still on after the twilight , knock at the door and tell them that they are violating the NRA policies by working past the allocated quota, is constitutional. It was the right thing to do by Supreme Court.
    - kitotik 6y ago
      Haha. That’s a funny but minor example. I was referring more to the socialist aspects - taxing corporations and wealthy individuals, the social security program, unemployment and welfare, workers rights, financial regulations, etc. My opinion is that FDR didn’t really love any of those things, but saw a potential for widespread social unrest, and tried to mitigate that by working out a deal with the oligarchy. This lead to the terms “liberal” and “conservative” defining the 2 parties and seems to have laid the groundwork of the extreme bifurcation we experience today.
      - splintercell 6y ago
        > My opinion is that FDR didn’t really love any of those things, but saw a potential for widespread social unrest, and tried to mitigate that by working out a deal with the oligarchy. How do you justify him fighting with Supreme Court and planning to pack it? That has to be one of the most unethical power grabs any President could go for? What you're describing above sounds like a mythology being attempted to be built around him.
        kitotik 6y ago
        I wasn’t intending to imply that he or the new deal were good or bad, just how I interpreted the history. I’ve yet to find a US president that I would classify as benevolent, honest, or worthy of exaltation.
- briandear 6y ago
  His internment of the Japanese should not be forgotten. It could also be argued that he empowered the Soviet Union. FDR has a mixed record in my mind. He also maintained a segregated military that Truman ultimately integrated in 1948.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  While FDR was instrumental in the USA becoming the superpower that it became, even without FDR, the United States would still have been a world power (due to its combination large population, high degree of industrialization with lots of manufacturing, and lots of natural resources) and would still have continued to have a democratic government. Even without FDR, the USA while maybe not developing into the superpower that it did, would still have been recognizable as the USA. Without Washington or Lincoln, the USA would either not exist or been completely unrecognizable.
jariel 6y ago
Yes there would be no USA without him, but as a foreigner, reading that, he seems like a brutal federalist. He literally says 'we don't want bloodshed, but hey, the constitution says you cannot secede, so there will be bloodshed if you try to'. We have several secessionist movements around the world: Canada, Spain, UK (Scotland/Northern Ireland), EU (Brexit) - to name just a few. Literally the 'land of the free', a new country, with a lot of devolved power ... but 'if you try to leave we're going to invade you'. It seems really inconsistent with democratic principles. Though histories and legalities are quite different, I was pretty shocked by his stark position. His tone is not aggressive, but his position is pretty hardcore absolutist.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Secession in the case of the American South was not a clear-cut case of everyone in a region wanting to live in their own country. The owners of the large slave-based plantations wanted to secede, and since they were the wealthy political elites, they made it happen. However, poorer white farmers who owned no slaves were either ambivalent about secession or outright pro-Union, and of course the black slave population weren't enthusiastic about the Confederate elites' aims. So, Lincoln was advocating for the large Southern population that did not want to divide the Union, not quashing regional democratic aspirations.
  - jariel 6y ago
    So that's a good point but - "was not a clear-cut case of everyone in a region wanting to live in their own country" Neither was the American revolution in the first place. Where was the referendum? What would have been the results? Would the secessionists even have won? Lincoln maybe didn't live in a time where he had a lot of historical examples to follow, fair enough, but the argument that 'some didn't want to separate' doesn't quite cut it fully because that's pretty much a pervasive context.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  Public pronouncements like this are only nominally statements of the speaker's beliefs; they are intended to persuade people to support the speaker's future policies. Few abolitonists felt that secession solved anything, and many would regard it as creating a rogue state. These people were already behind Lincoln's policies. The people who he had to persuade were abolitionists who worried whether they had the right to act, those who just wanted some way to make the issue someone else's problem, and those in the North who didn't find it troubling (and if he could persuade some of those who were pro-slavery, so much the better.)

empath75 6y ago

What to a slave is the 4th of July? https://youtu.be/NBe5qbnkqoM https://youtu.be/NBe5qbnkqoM

082349872349872 6y ago
for those who prefer text: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/ https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to... Although I largely concur with Douglass, he does seem a bit disingenuous about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise in discussing the Constitution. Further reading indicates that's a deliberate stance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass#Return_to_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass#Return_to_t... "To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day." (that day being 1852)

canada_dry 6y ago

> We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Yet here we are... the US two party system continues to devolve into a bitter no-holds-barred us-against-them battle. There are so many other foes - both internal and external - that need addressing, yet in-fighting is weakening the nation's foundation while the real enemies are rubbing their hands in glee.

antipaul 6y ago
I sometimes wonder if today’s political divisions are substantially deeper than in the past. Infighting seems to go back to the founding fathers. So is today the end of democracy? Or standard operating practice?
- vikramkr 6y ago
  We had a civil war. I would be very interested to see an analysis try and argue that we are more divided now than when we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people.
  - briandear 6y ago
    > we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people. That actually wasn’t why the civil war was started. It wasn’t until later in the war that emancipation was a goal. Slavery was legal in DC for the first year of the Civil War.
    - skybrian 6y ago
      This is more complicated. Southern states seceded over slavery. They put it in writing when they seceded and it was in the Confederate constitution. Although Lincoln attempted to get them not to secede with conciliatory gestures, they assumed the worst of the candidate of the Republican party, because it was the anti-slavery party. Although the stated goal of Lincoln and the US government at the beginning of the war was to preserve the union, the underlying north-south conflict that turned into a war was about slavery. You might argue, though, that it wasn't originally about ending slavery in states where it was established, because few people had a goal of doing that before the war. (Abolitionists did, but not as a practical, near-term goal.) The most serious political fights were about whether to expand slavery to more places, and here the South wouldn't take no for an answer - they not only wanted to preserve it, they wanted to expand it. And that was still about slavery. Yes, it was all really weird and horrible.

audessuscest 6y ago

Yale should change his name.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
That's the best idea I've heard! Rather than Yale changing its name, change Elihu Yale's name to something else, like Elihu Shitbag. Yale can get abstracted out and maybe become an acronym. Young Angry Leftwing Elitists, or something. (Class of '03 -- I love Yale)

082349872349872 6y ago

Context: 24.12.1860: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_Causes_Which_Induce_and_Justify_the_Secession_of_South_Carolina_from_the_Federal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_C... 08.02.1861: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Constitution_of_the_Confederate_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Constitution_of_th... 04.03.1861: First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln 12.04.1861: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

dr_dshiv 6y ago

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Damn, Lincoln! Makes me think we need those statues of Jefferson Davis (upside-down, for my taste) -- because now it seems clear that if the south hadn't seceded, emancipation would not have happened for decades if at all

hef19898 6y ago
Yeah, seems the Confederacy was the in itself the cause of tis own downfall. Edit: As a what-if question, where would the US have stood in that case during the two World Wars?
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  It is terrifying to think about what present day slavery would look like if it had been further enshrined as a right of the southern states. Or, if Lincoln had simply allowed succession.
  - vimy 6y ago
    https://youtu.be/Uyz-AyAOLek https://youtu.be/Uyz-AyAOLek From: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/
082349872349872 6y ago
The Brazilian example suggests decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil#The_end_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil#The_end_of_s... (but I have to admit my knowledge of Brasil doesn't extend much past Xuxa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OxJKFEofL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OxJKFEofL0 )
mpalmer 6y ago
Not defending Lincoln as an abolitionist; he definitely was not. But the statement was couched pretty heavily in what he was legally allowed to do as President. He seems extremely careful not to take a position that would inflame one side over the other - he calls attention to the process for making laws and amending the Constitution but takes care to mention he doesn't have any amendments he would put forward himself. Difficult position to be in for a president. There was no quick, legal path to the righteous thing - free all enslaved people.

protomyth 6y ago

I've found his Second Inaugural to be his more interesting https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page=transcript https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page... The first sounds like a man trying to hold it together by word with some appeasements.

js2 6y ago
Yes, but it's well known. It's inscribed on the inside wall of the Lincoln Memorial, along with the Gettysburg address. I had never read his first inaugural address before. I'm 48.
- protomyth 6y ago
  You really need to frame the speech with some understanding of the electoral breakdown of the election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidentia...
jhbadger 6y ago
Perhaps, but the "malice towards none" part is disappointing. Many people claim that the problem we have today (with the Confederacy still having its supporters today) is a result of Lincoln's assassination stopping his work, but the Second Inaugural suggests that even had he lived he wouldn't have been interested in putting Davis, Lee, etc. on trial for treason.
- protomyth 6y ago
  No, the "malice towards none" is an appeal to the better angels of humanity. Frankly, if more people lived by that last paragraph of the speech, the world would be a considerably better place. He was looking forward, not back.

JoBrad 6y ago

The last paragraph of this speech is perhaps the best appeal to our better selves a US politician has ever made, in my opinion. The way he seamlessly shifts from acknowledging the current madness to a lofty call-to-greatness gives me chills every time I read it. > I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

7532yahoogmail 6y ago

Op - thanks for finding and posting. I enjoyed reading it, and was pleased to see evidence intelligent rhetoric with heart. Now at this point Lincoln said he would not stop slavery -- that would change though.