Lincoln's Theology of the End of Slavery

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln offered nothing less than a theology of slavery and what it meant in america. According to that theology, slavery was an offence against god and original sin, and that sin had been purged or atoned only through the violence and bloodshed of the civil war. The blood of slavery would be repaid by the blood of the northern and southern dead. Through this atonement, an atonement familiar to americans of the time as the model of christ's sacrifice of his own blood to atone for original sin, the united states could be healed. Once slavery was ended, which lincoln had done even without a constitutional amendment, at least respect to the south,