Abraham Lincoln stood on the steps of the Capitol more than 144 years ago and said North and South alike must suffer for the sin of slavery.
"If God wills that [the war] continue until . . . every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, so it still must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,’ " Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, quoting the Psalms.
Called "Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount," his 1865 address has been deemed the most religiously sophisticated presidential speech in American history. It was delivered by a backwoods lawyer with just one year of formal schooling who never joined a church.