Select the correct text in the passage. Which part of this excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address indicates that Lincoln believed slavery was an unjust practice?
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it - all sought
avert it. While the inaugural address
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent
to in agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war - seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and
the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
And the war came.
eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern
part of it. These
One slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate,
and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to magnitude, or the duration, which it has
do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the
already attained. Neither
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even
before, the conflict itself should cease. 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. It may seem strange that any
men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of
other men's faces; but et us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered
fully.