>> Hi. My name is Michelle Krowl, and I'm
the Civil War and Reconstruction Specialist
in the Manuscript Division
at the Library of Congress.
Abraham Lincoln gave his second
inaugural address on March 4, 1865.
Unlike modern presidents who often
have speech writers who collaborate
with the President, he was
his own speech writer.
The 4th of March, 1865, started
out as a horrific day weather-wise.
It was pelting rain and gales and wind,
and it was just a really miserable day.
Vice President Andrew Johnson took his
oath of office inside the Capitol itself.
They come out so that Lincoln can give
his address and take his oath of office.
And when Lincoln came out, sun broke
through the clouds and shone brightly.
You might expect that speech
would be a victory speech.
You might expect policies about
reconstruction or going into the future.
But it's a very unusual address in that it
really does not address those kinds of issues.
He looks back very briefly
about what the war was about,
and he specifies that American slavery was --
everybody understood that American
slavery was somehow the cause.
And then he looks to the future.
Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist
speaker, was in the crowd that day.
When Lincoln asked him what he thought of
the speech, he called it a sacred effort.
>> 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 that 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.