When one thinks of Lincoln's farewell address, it is assumed that such, must have been his final address to congress and the people of these United States, at the conclusion of his second term in office, but Lincoln was assassinated near the beginning of his second inauguration, and thus did not finish his second term, yet, Lincoln did indeed have a farewell address. That farewell address was given in Springfield, Illinois on February 11, 1861, and is considered a prescient farewell address for it was given by Lincoln before departing from Illinois on the presidential train onto his journey to Washington, DC, as the elected President, at a time when seven States of the Union had already voted to secede from such, and in this address, Lincoln, who was well noted for his humility stated: " I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington."
Of course, as we all know, Lincoln did not return alive to Illinois, and the awesome task put forth before him was to deal with the secession of the southern States that created the confederacy which made the task before Lincoln truly monumental and shook the very foundations of this great nation, which arguably was a greater task than the one that was confronted by Washington, for the revolutionary battle, was a battle of one domestic people uniting to become free from the bounds of English control as opposed to a war between brothers fought on this soil, of which southern States that had voluntarily agreed to the compact of the controlling law of the land, its Constitution, decided that they could, dissolve themselves of it, and further that they could attack with arms or claim as their own federal outposts and facilities, considering these as being rightfully theirs and seen as intrusions upon their sovereign State territory.
Lincoln had many attributes as a President, of which one was, especially in consideration that he was a lawyer, the firm belief that what he could or could not do as the President, was constrained by the Constitution, which was and is the controlling document of this American republic. This made his task even more arduous for Lincoln had no desire to destroy what was the firm basis of this country, but instead he desired strongly to see that America actually lived up to its Constitution and that it would remain a country of the people, for the people, and by the people; and if this meant, that the people, must take up arms in order to put down an unlawful rebellion and to thereby defend its people and its Constitution, than this is exactly what would happen.
The decisions that Lincoln had to make to deal with this unlawful domestic insurrection were both monumental and unprecedented, in addition to the fact that Lincoln was not a military general, and had just been elected to the highest office of the land, by the people of that same country, in which, the losers of that election, decided that if they could not win at the ballot box, that they would dissolved themselves of their union with their fellow States.
All of these things, together, could have made for a different country, or two countries, or a different rule of law because of the removal or evisceration of our present Constitution, but instead, somehow, Lincoln, as our leader was not only able to successfully put down the rebellion, to therefore keep our country stitched together, and to circumvent any foreign entanglements into our domestic affairs, but also to renew and strengthen this country in such a manner, in which the scourge of slavery was eliminated from this great land, so that, there was in this nation, under God, a new birth of freedom for all.