リンカーン大統領の第二期就任演説の英文です。トップページへ
Abraham Lincoln
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1865
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, urgent 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.