Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address Analysis

The Civil War had finally come to an end when in the spring of 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered resulting in a victory for the Union. In the four years in which the war was fought, over 620,000 men were left dead. With the new freedoms granted to African Americans as a result of the outcome of the Civil War came challenges with reconstructing the Southern states that were rather ravaged and bitter. The Reconstruction period in America was in many ways still a war even though the Civil War had already ended. Although some 4 million slaves were given their freedom, which in the South was barely recognized to not recognized at all, congressional Republicans and President Andrew Johnson would face various economic, political,
In his speech, Lincoln never condemns the Southern states for causing the Civil War, however he offered the idea that both the North and the South should receive the judgement from God because of their American sin of slavery. His address serves the purpose of an apology and a plea for forgiveness for the allowance of national sorrow for the institution of slavery. He sought to avoid harsh treatment of the South, who had been defeated, by reminding the country that the war was a result of both sides. In Lincoln’s conclusion of his speech, he talks of plans for the Reconstruction, which included spending money on benefits for veterans of the Civil War and their wives which would account for half of the national spending. In his description of a generous Reconstruction policy, Lincoln’s Ten-Percent Plan stated that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once ten percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to the
Under these laws, labor contracts violated by blacks resulted in them being subject to arrest, beatings, and forced labor. In the Vagrancy Act of 1866, if any vagrant ran away and was recaptured, they were forced to work for no compensation. Vagrancy laws allowed authorities to arrest blacks in “idleness.” Blacks were then allowed to be assigned to a chain gang or to be auctioned off to a planter for as long as a year. These laws required blacks to have written proof of employment and barred them from leaving plantations. The Freedmen’s Bureau was created to act as a primitive welfare agency whose goal was to ease the transition from slavery to freedom. However, this agency actually helped to enforce some of these vagrancy laws and even refused to allow former slaves to land that they hand occupied during the