Hello and welcome to This Day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

Welcome to 50 Weeks that shaped America, our year-long series on the country's semi-Quincennial, and we have arrived at week nine and our first conversation about Abraham Lincoln.

We used to do inaugurations of presidents in this country in March, so it was this week in 1865

when Lincoln was inaugurated for a second time. And the address he gave that day, March 4th,

is the focus of today's conversation. Given just as the Civil War was coming to a

close, it is certainly one of Lincoln's most famous speeches, it and the Gettysburg Address are the two

that are inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial. And if Americans recognize anything from the address,

it is likely the last lines about what would come next after the war. Lincoln uses phrases like

with malice towards

none, with charity for all. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the

nation's wounds. He talks about achieving a, quote, just and lasting peace among ourselves and with

all nations. But prior to those forward-looking words, there is a very different kind of address in

many ways. Lincoln goes back and very clearly frames the Civil War as a war about the evils of

slavery. It's a speech in which he talks about God and divine justice and retribution. So it is a

speech that deserves a closer look, and it is a speech that lets us understand Lincoln's

evolution when it comes to slavery. lets us understand Lincoln's evolution when

it comes to slavery. Of course, Lincoln would be assassinated five weeks later, and a lot of what he

framed in the speech, especially the deep moral reckoning, would in many ways not come to pass.

So let's get into it as we do a close reading of Lincoln's second inaugural address.

Here is always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley.

Hello there.

Hello, Jody.

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