Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address

delivered his second inaugural address on Saturday, March 4, 1865, during his second inauguration as President of the United States. At a time when victory over secessionists in the American Civil War was within days and slavery in all of the U.S. was near an end, Lincoln did not speak of happiness, but of sadness. Some see this speech as a defense of his pragmatic approach to Reconstruction, in which he sought to avoid harsh treatment of the defeated rebels by reminding his listeners of how wrong both sides had been in imagining what lay before them when the war began four years earlier. Lincoln balanced that rejection of triumphalism, however, with recognition of the unmistakable evil of slavery. The address is inscribed, along with the Gettysburg Address, in the Lincoln Memorial.

Inaugural speech

Among those present for this speech was actor John Wilkes Booth, who, on April 14, 1865, just over a month after Lincoln's second inauguration, assassinated him.

In popular culture

An excerpt of the speech was dramatized in the 2012 Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis portraying Lincoln.
An excerpt of the speech was dramatized in the two-hour 2013 National Geographic Channel political docudrama Killing Lincoln, with Billy Campbell portraying Lincoln.
American composer Vincent Persichetti used text from the speech for his work A Lincoln Address that had been scheduled for President Richard Nixon's inaugural concert January 19, 1973, but was removed from the program after someone in the administration read the text and decided the President would be embarrassed by the excerpt "Fondly do we hope... that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away." Ironically, four days later, the Vietnam Peace Accords were signed.