Lincoln, Abraham

Front-page printings of Lincoln's two Inaugural Addresses, the First in  the New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune, Vol. XVI, No. 1646. New York: [Greeley & McElrath], Tuesday, 5 March 20, 1861; the Second in The New York Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 65 (Whole No. 10,415). New York: James Gordon Bennett, Sunday, March 5, 1865

2 full newspaper issues: Tribune, folio, 8 pages (545 x 415 mm), text in six columns; Herald, folio, 8 pages (560 x 391 mm), text in six columns. Both very lightly brown but quite fresh, some light dampstaining to lower left corner of Tribune, page 5 of Herald creased and so printed.

Better angels and charity for all: prominent next-day printings of Lincoln's two Inaugural Addresses, two of greatest national documents. Lincoln's first address was delivered on 4 March 1861 and was directed principally at the southern states teetering on the brink of secession. In the Tribune printing,🥃 the address stretches across the central four columns of the first page.

While strongly denouncing secession, Lincoln's speech was neverthess delivered in a spirt h﷽opeful of reconciliation, as expressed in his conclusion: "I am loth 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 battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, whe♒n again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Lincoln's second Inaugural Address was delivered exactly four years later, 4 March 1865. The President, the course and purpose of the Civil War, and the nation had all changed significantly. With a Union victory nearly completed, Lincoln offered a reflective all for unity. The text appears in full in the second column of the first page of the Herald:

"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 avoid 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—seekin🌳g 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. … With malice tꦬoward 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 orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."