Who shall tell how, through the eons of the long ago, these trees have been silent and majestic watchers of the night and dawn and day of the world’s life? How shall we conjecture how long they have been welcoming the sun in his rising, and have caught his last and lingering caress as he has disappeared in the glory of the evening sky? How long have they been the vigil keepers of the night, and watched the silent constellations sailing through the immensity of space? Who shall tell us if these trees caught, perhaps, the earliest song of the stars of the morning, while above and beyond them, unnumbered comet and meteor have shone and vanished?
How came these trees to this continent? Have they ever lived and burgeoned in some other happy land? or are they the fruit of one sole and giant extravagance of nature, exulting in the uppermost luxury of force, and reveling in the very fullness of all power? Shall man solve the mystery? Nature is full of lessons yet to be learned, but nowhere in air or earth or water is there more awe-inspiring strangeness than in these great growths whose wonder we have studied, but with study fruitless of revelation.
To me, during the days we spent in the forest, the contemplation of the redwoods was never for a moment wearisome. I have looked up along their marvelous length in the early morning, when the frondent and topmost spear caught the first glimpse of the sun’s glory, and I have seen his afternoon rays flashing and glinting on emerald bough and purple trunk, and at last losing themselves in the depths of a solemn and impenetrable shade. I have lain at night on the dry earth and looked up at the closing vista of the dark boughs fretting the moonlight and shutting out the sparkle of the stars, until their weird shapes seemed summited in their very pathway; and I saw, when Pan killed Care upon the mountain-side that overhung the grove, such an illumination of the glory of the trees in purple and crimson and scarlet as shall forever make the ablest effort of the scenic artist stale, tawdry, unendurable.
THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
By Abraham Lincoln
(Delivered from the steps of the Capitol at Washington, 1865.)
Fellow Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
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 with war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the 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. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease when, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 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 prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.