January 8, 2009

  • For those of you who happen to read my blog (thank you very much), and especially those with a historical bent to your education or interest, here is a web page that I hope you will find interesting: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html.  This page has all the inaugural addresses of all the Presidents!  Did you know that there have been five Presidents who did not give inaugural addresses?

    I went looking for Lincoln’s address where he said something to the effect that every drop of blood extracted by the whip should be paid for by a drop of blood drawn by the sword.  I knew the quote was from Lincoln, but I just did not know where to find it.  I searched for it in Yahoo! and this was the fifth hit on that search: Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

    Not only did the page have the quote I was thinking of, I was utterly amazed by the Scriptural references used by Lincoln!  I knew that he was a Christian, but I did not know how many times in this short address of four paragraphs he referred to God and the Bible, maybe you will count them.  Robert Newdow would have a fit if Obama’s inaugural address had one reference to God, let alone what Lincoln said!  Lincoln’s final paragraph is an oft quoted citation:

    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.

    Yet the paragraph that had the quote I was looking for was more powerful to me than that concluding one was:

    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."

    Could you imagine someone in leadership of our nation being willing to take such personal responsibility for the War?  Ours has become the “T-ball generation,” where no one wins and no one loses, no one is responsible and no one suffers; thus no one benefits, no one gains, and no one learns the lessons of success and failure.  Being created equal, yet we have not equal resources, abilities, or circumstances; and no government can do more than give us equal opportunity to use the resources we are afforded.

    Can you imagine a president today so readily and openly acknowledging God and His providence in the affairs of State?

    In less than a month Lincoln would be dead of an assassin’s bullet to the back of his head.  Was Lincoln a casualty of war?

    When I was in the sixth grade, our US history teacher asked the class to name the primary cause of the Civil War.  I raised my hand and said "Slavery."  I was rebuffed by the teacher who vehemently said it was states rights.  Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address puts that to rest!  It's pretty short, and worth reading.