December 9

"The Almighty has His own purposes. The prayers of both could not be answered. If American slavery He now wills to remove, He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by which the offense came. ..Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. "

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President, 1861-1865- from his Second Inaugural Address Saturday, March 4, 1865-The Civil War was still going on but would soon end with Lee's surrender to Grant on April 9. Lincoln was shot and assassinated on April 14, and died the following morning of April 15. In attendance at this brief address was the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, a popular actor of that era..."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... Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes... 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."