Read the passage.
excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
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, insurgent 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.
How does Lincoln convey his view that the South was mainly to blame for starting the Civil War?
He says that slavery in the South was the reason the war began.
He claims that four years earlier, Southern agents were in Washington, D.C. seeking to start a war.
He contrasts the South's desire to break up the Union with the North's desire to save the Union.
He reminds the audience that the South did not want to negotiate a solution before the war began.
