ESSENTIAL QUESTION

How did Abraham Lincoln use language to discourage Southern secession in his first inaugural address?

CONTEXT

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was the 16th President of the United States. Born in a log cabin on the Kentucky frontier, he was self-educated, studied to be a lawyer, and rose in politics, representing Illinois in Congress and eventually becoming a leader in the new Republican Party. National politics in the 1850s and early 1860s were contentious, belligerent, and antagonistic. A moderate Republican, Lincoln was elected president in 1860, even though he did not actively seek the nomination in the South and seven states had seceded from the Union by the time he delivered this inaugural at the US Capitol. Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, D.C., in April, 1865.

TEXT

…I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so…

…It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances….

…The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor…

…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.

INQUIRY

1. Why did Lincoln state he would not interfere with the institution of slavery?
2. Explain Lincoln’s views on secession.
3. How did Lincoln address Southern citizens?
4. What was the tone of these excerpts from them 1st Inaugural? How do you know? How did the tone change?
5. To whom did Lincoln give the responsibility for beginning the Civil War?
6. What were the “mystic chords of memory”? Why did Lincoln use that metaphor?
7. What did Lincoln mean in his closing by referring to the “better angels of our nature”?
8. Lincoln won reelection in 1864, and much had happened in the four years since the 1st Inaugural. Secession had become a fact and after the Emancipation Proclamation the purpose of the Civil War focused on the eradication of slavery. In Lincoln’s 2nd inaugural address (March, 1865) he closed with the words, “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.” What was the tone of those words? How did that tone differ from the tone of the 1st Inaugural text?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/abraham-lincoln/

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/-with-malice-toward-none-lincoln-s-second-inaugural.htm