--- title: Second Inaugural Address url: https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lincoln-second-inaugural-1865/ description: Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln (1865-03-04), full text with provenance and rights. section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg) [Library](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/) · Speech # Second Inaugural Address At a glance Lincoln's address at the start of his second term, delivered a month before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. - **Author:** Abraham Lincoln - **Published:** March 4, 1865 - **Origin:** United States - **Length:** 698 words Full details - **Edition:** Second inaugural address, 4 March 1865, as transcribed by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School - **Language:** English - **Text source:** [The Avalon Project, Yale Law School (Lillian Goldman Law Library)](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln2.asp) - **Text basis:** Transcription by the Avalon Project; the page does not name the printing it was typed from. - **Rights:** An inaugural address of the President in his official capacity, a United States federal work, and in any case public domain by age (1865). The Avalon site's design and navigation are not copied. - **Rights checked:** October 2, 2026 On this page - [The text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lincoln-second-inaugural-1865/#read) - [Provenance and rights](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lincoln-second-inaugural-1865/#provenance) - [Related](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lincoln-second-inaugural-1865/#related) The address Abraham Lincoln gave on 4 March 1865, at the start of his second term and about five weeks before Lee's surrender at Appomattox. At about 700 words it is one of the shortest inaugural addresses, and it ends with the passage beginning "With malice toward none". The archive's case study on Union and Confederate print is the nearest page; the Library holds the text. ## The text [Download as plain text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lincoln-second-inaugural-1865/lincoln-second-inaugural-1865.txt) 698 words, with the provenance header above the text Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. 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. 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." 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." 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. ## Provenance and rights - **Edition:** Second inaugural address, 4 March 1865, as transcribed by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School - **Text source:** [The Avalon Project, Yale Law School (Lillian Goldman Law Library)](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln2.asp) - **Text basis:** Transcription by the Avalon Project; the page does not name the printing it was typed from. - **Rights:** An inaugural address of the President in his official capacity, a United States federal work, and in any case public domain by age (1865). The Avalon site's design and navigation are not copied. Checked October 2, 2026. - **Changes made:** The Avalon page's date line, navigation and footer removed. Wording and punctuation are the transcript's own. - **Source file checksum:** `4a5ba9f4565f4a7f…` (SHA-256 of the download this text was made from) ## Related - [Union and Confederate print, 1861-1865](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/us-civil-war-print/)