Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States of America delivered his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861. In this address the president spoke to the South about his proposed policies. He expressed his plans to "hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government", he called the Union "indissolvable" to prove that secession was impossible, and he promised never to be the first to attack but to only defend the country against enemies.Lincoln's deepest desire was to see the Union as a whole, rather than seeing it torn apart by the people within it.

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. 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."