Identify this work: Just 701 words long, this work took onl…
Identify this work: Just 701 words long, this work took only six or seven minutes to deliver, and contains many of the most memorable phrases in American political oratory. This work contained neither gloating nor rejoicing. Rather, it offered the author’s most profound reflections on the causes and meaning of the Civil War. The “scourge of war,” he/she explained, was best understood as divine punishment for the sin of slavery, a sin in which all Americans, North as well as South, were complicit. It describes a national moral debt that had been created by the “bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil,” and ends with a call for compassion and reconciliation.
Read Details