Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Given on Saturday, March 4, 1865
Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to 'saving' the Union without war, urgent 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.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These 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 do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has 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 let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0878603.html

Salaries of the President, Vice President, and Other U.S. Officials

Salaries of the President

Che Guevara

Guevara, Che (Ernesto Guevara) (chā gāvä'rä, ārnes'tō) [key], 1928–67, Cuban revolutionary and political leader, b. Argentina. Trained as a physician at the Univ. of Buenos Aires, he took part (1952) in riots against the dictator Juan Perón in Argentina, joined agitators in Bolivia, and worked in a leper colony. In 1953 he went to Guatemala, joined the leftist regime of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and when Arbenz was overthrown (1954) fled to Mexico, where he met Fidel Castro and other Cuban rebels.

Guevara became Castro's chief lieutenant soon after the rebel invasion of Cuba in 1956, in which he proved to be a resourceful guerrilla leader. As president of the national bank after the fall (Jan., 1959) of Fulgencio Batista he was instrumental in cutting Cuba's traditional ties with the United States and in directing the flow of trade to the Communist bloc. He served (1961–65) as minister of industry. At heart a revolutionary rather than an administrator, he left Cuba in 1965 to foster revolutionary activity in the Congo and other countries. In 1967, directing an ineffective guerrilla movement in Bolivia, he was wounded, captured, and executed by government troops. Guevara wrote Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Man and Socialism in Cuba (1967), Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1968), and The African Dream (2001), a forthright account of the failed Congo rebellion.

See his diaries, ed. by R. Scheer (1968) and by D. James (1968); his speeches and writings, ed. by J. Gerassi (1968) and D. Deutschmann (1987); biography by J. L. Anderson (1997); D. James, Che Guevara (1969); M. Ebon, Che: The Making of a Legend (1969); L. J. González and G. A. Sánchez Salazar, The Great Rebel (tr. 1969); R. Harris, Death of a Revolutionary (1970); L. Sauvage, Che Guevara: The Failure of a Revolutionary (1974).

Sherman Alexie

Born: October 7, 1966
Birthplace: Spokane Indian Reservation, Wellpinit, Washington

Sherman Alexie's inventive, realistic, and often humorous writing evokes contemporary American Indian life. The son of a Spokane Indian mother and a Coeur d'Alene Indian father, Alexie first found his voice as a poet. His debut The Business of Fancydancing (1991) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

His The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a book of short stories, became the basis for the movie Smoke Signals (1998), which Alexie wrote and co-produced. Alexie's crowd- and critic-pleasing works include the novel Reservation Blues (1995), the mystery Indian Killer (1996), and the short-story collections The Toughest Indian in the World (2000) and Ten Little Indians (2003). His latest is the poetry collection Dangerous Astronomy, published in 2005.

Robert W. Sarnoff

Born: 7/2/1918
Birthplace: New York City

Son of David Sarnoff, a pioneer in radio and television who had organized NBC in 1926, Robert W. Sarnoff was groomed to succeed his father at the helm of both RCA (Radio Corporation of America) and NBC.

In 1956 he became president of NBC and in 1965, president of RCA. Under his leadership TV became racially integrated when he supported Nat King Cole's variety show and Bill Cosby's role in I Spy. The first presidential debate was televised during Sarnoff's tenure. He became chairman of RCA in 1970 and diversified the company; he was ousted in 1975.
Died: 2/22/1997