Photo from the Library of Congress This sketch depicts Union soldiers in the field voting in the 1864 presidential election.

Those words are pretty familiar.

They’re the start of the conclusion to Lincoln’s second inaugural address, given in March 1865.

But those words are never written if Lincoln loses four months earlier in November.

We know that Lincoln won that election in 1864 over George McClellan, who had twice led one of the Union’s largest armies.

Photo from the Warren Mail This was one of the headlines that proclaimed Lincoln’s victory in the 1864 presidential election.

But Lincoln had spent much of the year of the election thinking he would lose.

That was tied largely to the status of the Civil War, unsurprisingly the single most important issue in that campaign. 1864 had not been a great year for Union forces but prospects turned in September when Union armies seized Atlanta.

That was obviously well-timed with an election coming up in November.

Lincoln ran as a Republican in 1860.

But the party ditched its name in 1864, when Lincoln was actually nominated by the “National Union Party,” a coalition that aimed to bring together Republicans and pro-war Democrats.

According to a Cornell University article, Lincoln would go on to receive 55 percent of the popular vote and win 212 of 234 electoral votes.

For the Republican Warren Mail, that was an outcome to be celebrated. (I could not find preserved editions of the Democratic paper in town, the Ledger).

The Warren Mail’s Nov. 12 edition celebrated Lincoln’s victory under the headline “UNION AND LIBERTY!”

What’s presented as an editorial quite frankly feels like partisan propaganda and, to be fair, to some degree it was.

“If ever a people had cause to thank God and take courage, we are that people,” the Mail said. “Amid great temptations and great national trial, we have proved true to ourselves, to Liberty and to Law. From the most vital political struggle of this or any other age, the Union men come out conquerors.”

Abraham Lincoln, who has stood firm as a rock to beat back the wild, mad waves of rebellion, disunion and treason for nearly four of the most eventful and trying years in our nation’s history, is re-elected by a majority the most overwhelming that ever came from a grateful people since the days of Washington.

It ought to be decisive. It ought to show the South that we mean by our ballots just what we mean by our bullets, that treason against the Government must cease and traitors must surrender and submit to the constitution and the laws.

It ought to prove to foreign governments that we can and will settle our own difficulties in our own way and that they must not interfere.

And it ought to convince disorganizers at home that faction is fruitless. The people can be trusted. They are in earnest and mean just what they say when they declare through the ballot-box in tones which make traitors tremble, that the Union shall be preserved, and that Slavery, the cause of all our trouble, shall be blotted from the land forever!

Final results weren’t yet available across the nation but details had started to emerge locally.

“Again do we take special pleasure in recording the result in Warren County,” the Mail reported. “Below we give the majorities in the several townships as we get them without waiting for the official count. Just see how squarely the towns stand up to the boys in the field all along the line except at the Courthouse in Warren.

The paper published who won each township:

Lincoln’s majorities were 13 in Brokenstraw, 54 in Columbus, 10 in Cherry Grove, 18 in Deerfield, 36 in Eldred, 19 in Elk, 167 in Freehold, 141 in Farmington, 32 in Kinzua, 67 in Pittsfield, 62 in Pine Grove, 223 in Sugar Grove, 17 in Spring Creek, 47 in Sheffield, 71 in Southwest, 41 in Tidioute and 27 in Youngsville.

McClellan took a 36-vote majority in Conewango, 2 in Corydon, 36 in Glade, 9 in Limestone, 6 in Mead, 39 in Pleasant and 46 in Warren.

“If our soldier vote is pretty generally polled we shall give 1,000 majority for Lincoln and Johnson,” the Mail concluded. “That will do for little Warren this time. Well done, say we.”

The Mail then told the story of John Crippen.

“John Crippen, of Brokenstraw township, in this County, aged 94 years went over four miles to Youngsville last Tuesday to vote for Lincoln. The first President he voted for was Jefferson.

He was not quite old enough to vote for Washington, the great founder of our government, and was not too old or too feeble to vote for Lincoln, the preserver and defender of the government founded by the Fathers of the Republic nearly a century ago.

Notwithstanding his advanced years, he chopped and split over 1,700 rails two years ago, and is still comparatively active.

“Notwithstanding the Democratic talk about Northern streets running with a blood on election day,” the Mail concluded, “we never had a quieter and more orderly election in Warren. One cause of this was shutting off the whiskey till night. It worked capitally and would work better still if it were shut off all the time.”

The victory in Nov. affirmed the course that Lincoln had ultimately chosen – Union and abolition.

Most of us have had to read (or memorize!) the Gettysburg Address. I feel the same way about the second inaugural. Here it is:

“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 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.

“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.”