{"id":3706,"date":"2011-03-04T10:42:27","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T15:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=3706"},"modified":"2011-03-04T15:34:59","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T20:34:59","slug":"president-abraham-lincolns-first-inaugural-address-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2011\/03\/04\/president-abraham-lincolns-first-inaugural-address-2\/","title":{"rendered":"President Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> One hundred fifty years ago today<\/a> Abraham Lincoln<\/a> became the sixteenth President of the United States. After he delivered his Inaugural Address<\/a> from the central portico of the U.S. Capitol<\/a>, Chief Justice Roger Taney<\/a> administered the oath of office.\u00a0Newspapers throughout the country published Lincoln’s speech and debated what it meant for the future of \u00a0the country.\u00a0\u00a0The New York\u00a0Times<\/em>, which supported the Republican party, argued<\/a> that Lincoln had been \u00a0“highly conciliatory towards all who have been led to entertain unjust and unfounded apprehensions” about the new administration. Other Republican papers such as the Cleveland (OH) Herald<\/em> also praised the speech<\/a>. “The Inaugural of President Lincoln will take its place in history as one of the most remarkable state papers of the present age,” as the Herald<\/em> explained<\/a>. In addition,\u00a0the\u00a0Herald <\/em>believed \u00a0that \u201cthe Union men of the South cannot fail to be pleased\u201d since Lincoln had\u00a0indicated that \u201cthe constitutional rights of each section of the Union shall be respected and protected. \u201d\u00a0One southern unionist newspaper, the Fayetteville (NC) Observer<\/em>, noted<\/a> that “there is much in Mr. Lincoln\u2019s words to assure the South that it need anticipate no violation of its rights from his administration.” The Observer<\/em> argued that President Lincoln would not “resort to ‘coercion’\u201d because “it would be the maddest of follies.” Some southern editors, however, were accused of distorting the text of the speech in an attempt to support secessionists. While the Republican editor of the Chicago (IL) Tribune<\/em> knew from experience that \u201ca long document [rarely] is transmitted over the wires without undergoing more or less transformation,\u201d Joseph Medill<\/a> believed <\/a>in this case that some editors had deliberately included errors. \u201cEvidently the conductors of the secession press are unwilling that the people whom they have hurried into rebellion without a cause, shall have the opportunity of learning the truth,\u201d as Medill concluded<\/a>. You can read more about Lincoln’s Inaugural Address in chapter 3 of Douglas L. Wilson\u2019s Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words<\/a><\/em> (2006) and chapter 20 of Michael Burlingame’s Abraham Lincoln: A Life<\/a><\/em> (2008).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One hundred fifty years ago today Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth President of the United States. After he delivered his Inaugural Address from the central portico of the U.S. Capitol, Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office.\u00a0Newspapers throughout the country published Lincoln’s speech and debated what it meant for the future of \u00a0the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,171],"tags":[4756],"class_list":["post-3706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antebellum-1840-1861","category-historic-periodicals","tag-contests-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3706"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3708,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions\/3708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}