The Greatest Presidential Speeches of All Time

Happy Presidents Day!

Today is one of Media Orchard’s favorite holidays, because we’re huge history buffs — and we particularly love Washington and Lincoln. (We must admit, though, that as we drive on President George Bush Turnpike each morning, we worry what politicians will be honored with future such holidays…)

If you haven’t yet read our Top 10 Moments in Public Honesty, which is dedicated to George and Abe, please check it out. We’d like to once again thank Kami, Mason, Paul and others who contributed ideas.

We thought we’d share with you today our two favorite presidential speeches. The first is Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The second is Woodrow Wilson’s 1917 speech asking Congress to declare war on Germany.

Here’s an excerpt from each:

Lincoln –

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.”

Lincoln’s speech is remarkable for many reasons, but his assertion that the war was a punishment for slavery, and equating the blood of white men with that of black men, would have been unthinkable even a few years earlier.

Wilson –

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve.

We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

If uttered today, Wilson’s idealistic words would be viewed with cynicism. But Wilson stood by his ideals by rejecting the punitive approach of France and Britain at Versailles, and by insisting on the creation of the League of Nations. If only Wilson’s ideals had triumphed then, the Second World War might never have happened.

Great men in momentous times.

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