4. mars - Dei store talars dag

4. mars er datoen då to av dei beste talane i historia vart heldne. I 1865 vart Abraham Lincoln gjeninnsett som president i USA og holdt då ein av sine beste talar. Tala handla naturlig nok mest om Krigen Mellom Statane og om gjennoppbygginga som stod for døra. Eg har spesielt sansen for den siste delen av talen. Som høyrest slik ut:


"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".


I 1933 vart Franklin Delano Roosevelt innsett i same verv som Lincoln ein gong hadde. Sjølv om FDR gjorde mykje fælet i dei to fyrste presidentperiodane sine var han, med unntak av Lincoln, den mest taleføre presidenten USA nokon gong har hatt. Når han vart sett inn som president heldt han si berømte "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"-tale.