December 1, 1862 – Lincoln’s Eloquent Second Annual Message to Congress

On this day in history, Abraham Lincoln sent his second annual message to Congress, beginning with a report on initiatives taken by his administration in the previous year. At the end of that rather long disquisition, he launched into an eloquent coda – reminiscent, as historian Leis E. Lehrman pointed out in his book Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War, of the Saint Crispin Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V. (You can read Henry’s speech here to see the comparison.) As Ted Widmer of Brown University argued in the “New York Times,” “Every sentence [of Lincoln’s coda, which follows] bears re-reading.”:

Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just–a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”

Widmer noted: “He was speaking of emancipation, but also of a larger topic, the ultimate survival of democracy.” With “last best hope,” Widmer averred, Lincoln improved upon Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural phrase in which he called America “the world’s best hope.” Lincoln was making the passionate plea that “America, for all her problems, was still worth fighting for.”

President Abraham Lincoln – 1862 Portrait by Mathew Brady