Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address Analysis

On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln gave his second inauguration speech as President of the United States, which he gives after the victory over the secessionists in the American Civil War. In his second inauguration speech, President Lincoln says, “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God…and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due…that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.” He is speaking of the happiness and sadness the war has caused and how he wished to put the war behind and hopes that God does not punish them more for enslaving the African and Black slaves for so long in the North and South. The end of the Civil war was not the end
Even before slavery was outlawed in the North, racism was becoming a part of their culture and it just worsened over time. The States of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Maryland made it illegal for blacks (slaves or freedman) and whites to get married in the late 17th century. By 1726, the law became harsher and punished those free blacks that married a white person by selling them into slavery while the white partner suffered no consequence. This shows how even though both the white partner and black partner were free; the Government viewed the blacks as inferiors to the whites even if the black person was free. Laws such as prohibiting interracial marriage promoted the issues of racism and white superiority even after the emancipation of slaves in 1862. Racism did not leave after the emancipation because it had been happening since the late 17th century, and just because the blacks are free does not mean that over one hundred years of prejudice and superiority of the whites goes away, especially if the Government would keep encouraging the separation of whites and blacks after emancipating the
The Cuban Government was trying to give the black slaves their freedom in stages, but gave up on it and freed them completely in 1886. An example of the Government not giving equal treatment towards the Afro-Cuban community is, that on the 1907 Cuban census 30% of the Cuban populating was Afro-Cuban and the only Government jobs that they were mostly hired for was the lower positions, such as messengers or office boys. The census also showed that they were being misrepresented, because out of the top jobs in the Government only 9 of them were Afro-Cubans out of 205. Not only were the Afro-Cuban misrepresented in the Government jobs; they were also excluded from the high-status jobs, such as doctors, teachers, and lawyers. The 1907 census from Cuba, tells us that only 9 out of 1,240 physicians were black, 4 out of 1,347 lawyers were black, and 439 out of 5,964 teachers in Cuba were black. These statistics point out that even though the Government was saying that the laws were not racist in reality they were because they were excluding the people of color in Cuba. The Afro-Cuban tried to fight back so they formed the Partido Independente De Color, which was a political party made of black Cubans that formed in 1906. Their main goal was not to separate the White and Black Cubans but to bring them