The Civil War

by Gordon Leidner

  Excerpts from Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address

  March 4, 1861

  Fellow citizens of the United States:

  In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President “before he enters on the execution of this office…”

  …I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

  Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?…

  …I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself…

  …If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this…

  …Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left…

  …Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

  By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.

  My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.

  In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”

  I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.233

  The Gettysburg Address: Abraham Lincoln

  November 19, 1863

  Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

  But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.234

  Abraham Lincoln

  Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

  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, 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.235

  Grant’s Terms of Surrender to Lee at Appomattox

  April 9, 1865

  In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the sidearms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.236

  Farewell Address: General Robert E. Lee

  April 10, 1865, General Order No. 9

  After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

  I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles who have remained steadfast to the last that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them; but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that would have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their Countrymen.

  By the terms of the Agreement officers and men can return to their homes and remain there until exchanged.

  You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.

  With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.237

  Endnotes

  1. First Annual Message to Congress, 1861.

  2. Before the antislavery society, 1842.

  3. G. Ward, R. Burns, and K. Burns, The Civil War: An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1992), 6. Hereafter CWIH.

  4. CWIH, 12.

  5. O. G. Villard, John Brown 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2006), 461.

  6. Dred Scott Decision, United States Supreme Court, March 1857.

  7. Bradley E. Gernand, A Virginia Village Goes to War: Falls Church During the Civil War (Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company, 2002), 18.

  8. CWIH, 2.

  9. Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 226.

  10. CWIH, 9.

  11. Villard, 563.

  12. S. G. Hyslop and N. Kagan, Eyewitness to the Civil War: The Complete History from Secession to Reconstruction (Washington, DC: National Geographic Books, 2006), 23.

  13. American Whig Review, Volumes 11–12 (New York: Wiley and Putnam, etc., 1850), 215.

  14. Edmund Ruffin, The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, Volume 1 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1972), 386.

  15. CWIH, 52.

  16. James L. Abrahamson, The Men of Secession and Civil War, 1859–1861 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2000), 3.

  17. Rod Gragg, A Commitment to Valor: A Unique Portrait of Robert E. Lee in His Own Words (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 27.

  18. Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 222.

  19. W. E. B. DuBois, John Brown: A Biography (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1997), 184.

  20. CWIH, 5.

  21. Rev. J. W. Jones, Personal Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee (New York: Forge Books, 2003), 438.

  22. Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 138.

  23. Abrahamson, xv.

  24. ibid.

  25. A. M. Williams, Sam Houston and the War of Independence in Texas (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1893), 354.

  26. Allen C. Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 205.

  27. B. H. Liddel Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2009), 74.

  28. Allan Peskin, Garfield: A Biography (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1978), 86.

  29. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 154–155.

  30. Letter from L. W. Spratt to J. Perkins of Louisiana, who was helping form the Confederate Constitution. Printed in the Charleston Mercury, February 13, 1861.

  31. Macon, Georgia, Journal and Messenger, Oct. 2, 1850.

  32. David S. Heidler, Pulling the Temple Down: The Fire-Eaters and the Destruction of the Union (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994), 42.

  33. Abrahamson, 99.

  34. To the cadets at the Virginia Military Institute, April 13, 1861.

  35. CWIH, 24.

  36. B. C. Miller, John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civil War Memory (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010), 142.

  37. CWIH, 8.

  38. R. J. Rombauer, The Union Cause i
n St. Louis in 1861: An Historical Sketch (St. Louis: Press of Nixon-Jones Printing Co., 1909), 159.

  39. CWIH, 14.

  40. Harry E. Pratt, Concerning Mr. Lincoln (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1944), 52.

  41. Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 19.

  42. William C. Davis, A Government of Our Own: The Making of the Confederacy (New York: Free Press, 1994), 310.

  43. Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, A Diary from Dixie (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1905), April 12, 1861.

  44. Eba Anderson Lawton, Major Robert Anderson and Fort Sumter, 1861 (Albany, NY: Knickerbocker Press, 1911), 17.

  45. CWIH, 41.

  46. Ford Risley, Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 158.

  47. Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 355.

  48. Time-Life Books editors. First Manassas (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1997), 42.

  49. Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 46.

  50. Wilmer L. Jones, Generals in Blue and Gray, Volume I, Lincoln’s Generals (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006), 44.

  51. CWIH, 55.

  52. James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 72.

  53. CWIH, 82.

  54. CWIH, 55.

  55. James L. Roark, et. al., The American Promise: A History of the United States, Volume 1: To 1877 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010), 514.