Blog 12 - Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Lincoln’s second inaugural address was probably one of the only readings I was excited about reading. I have of course read and heard this address before, however, I have not read or heard the second inaugural address for a long time. Because of this I was happy to refresh my mind on this very important speech. When I read this speech I realized how religious this speech is. I really have never thought of Abraham Lincoln as a religious president, but after reading the speech and going to the lecture I have learned that he was very religious. One of the most interesting things that Dr. H told us was that Abraham Lincoln owned a Book of Mormon. Dr. H said that they don’t know how much of it he actually read, but they know that he owned one. This was very interesting to me, mainly because the Mormons were not very liked at this time period for being polygamists. One of my favorite parts of the speech was how Abraham Lincoln unified the north and the south when he talked about the Bible. He states, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” This statement in the text really stood out to me. Mainly because it is very true, the North and the South are both reading the same text they are just interpreting it differently. This is not uncommon. In class Dr. H told us that there are over 1,500 denominations of Christian religions. From this I believe that most people interpret the Bible (and most religious books) differently. It is not clearly defined so because of this I am not surprised that there are so many Christian denominations. Another interesting thing that we talked about in the lecture was the length of the inaugural address. From the inaugural addresses that I have read from the past and the ones I have heard in my lifetime, I do think that Lincoln’s inaugural address was rather short. However, I think that it is to the point and is more effective due to the fact that it is not too over winded. It doesn’t have words just for length; it is just to the point. Definitely my favorite part was that Abraham Lincoln wrote the speech himself. In today’s world all political leaders have speechwriters and do not really write anything themselves. This speech is fantastic and I think that it definitely had to be influenced at least a little bit by God. This speech is considered to be one of the best speeches of all time and the fact that Abraham Lincoln wrote it himself and did not make that many changes to the draft shows that he was inspired and that he truly was trying to bring the United States back together. I stand by the people that believe this is one of the best inaugural addresses of all time.