Question

Part B Which excerpt from “Second Inaugural Address” best supports the answer to Part A? a. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. b. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which … must needs come, but which, … [God] now wills to remove, … shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? c. Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, … so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” d. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds….

Answer 1

The excerpt b from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address best supports the idea that God intended to remove the offense of slavery through the Civil War, aligning with the Emancipation Proclamation's impact.

When assessing which excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address best supports the profound impact of the Emancipation Proclamation and the belief that God intended to end slavery through the war, option b is the most fitting.

The reason for this is that it directly addresses the concept of American slavery being an offense that God now wills to remove, which aligns with the idea that the war and the Emancipation Proclamation were instruments of divine judgment and signs of God's will to abolish slavery.

Excerpt b states, "If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which ... must needs come, but which, ... [God] now wills to remove, ... shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?" This section echoes the sentiment that the war, as devastating as it was, might have been a necessary means to an end—the end being the abolition of slavery, seen as an offense to God and humanity.