Scott Detrow

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It's Consider This from NPR.

I'm Scott Detrow.

Hey, it's Scott.

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When you walk up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, cross the colonnade, and turn to your right, you'll see the text of Lincoln's second inaugural address.

It's a short speech, barely 700 words.

It was delivered in the waning days of the Civil War, at a moment when Union victory was close at hand.

And rather than trumpeting success, Lincoln wrestles with how the nation could have been drawn into the Civil War in the first place.

He describes war as an unpredictable force, almost beyond the control of its participants.

One of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, he said, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.

And the war came.