Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address

Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address was delivered on Monday, March 4, 1861, as part of his taking of the oath of office for his first term as the sixteenth president of the United States.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

He had held to a strict policy of silence during the months leading up to his inauguration, carefully avoiding making any statements that could be misconstrued by either the North or the South, prior to his becoming the leader of the nation.

[4] Lincoln composed his address in the back room of his brother-in-law's store in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, using four basic references: Henry Clay's 1850 speech on compromise, Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne, Andrew Jackson's proclamation against nullification, and the United States Constitution.

Lincoln's soon-to-be Secretary of State, William H. Seward, later made suggestions that softened the original tone somewhat and contributed to the speech's famous closing.

"[2] Lincoln also expanded on Jackson's conception of "constitutional democracy as a fragile enterprise that requires political minorities to accept and submit to majority rule.

"[7] Stylistically, both Jackson and Lincoln portrayed the South as the aggressors; each of them "rhetorically downplayed his degree of agency by using terms of obligation rather than decision, in order to claim the moral high ground and preemptively cast his opponents as the belligerents.

"[7] The Proclamation's influence on the First Inaugural can be seen most directly by comparing their arguments for why compact theory does not justify secession, and the language in their penultimate paragraphs: Seward's text was based, in part, on James Madison's warnings against the dangers of civil conflict in his Federalist No.

[10] For the next ten days, Lincoln traveled widely throughout the North, stopping in Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, New York City, and Philadelphia, where on the afternoon of February 21 he pulled into Kensington Station.

Lincoln took an open carriage to the Continental Hotel (now known as The Franklin Residences and located at 834 Chestnut Street in Center City Philadelphia, with almost 100,000 spectators waiting to catch a glimpse of the president-elect.

He assured the rebellious states that the federal government would never initiate any conflict with them, and indicated his own conviction that "touched" once more by "the better angels of our nature," the "mystic chords of memory" North and South would "yet swell the chorus of the Union."

[11] Modern writers and historians generally consider the speech to be a masterpiece and one of the finest presidential inaugural addresses, with the final lines having earned particularly lasting renown in American culture.