It’s March 4th of 1865, when Abraham delivered his second Inaugural Address. Standing in the crowd listening to this, I don’t believe a word. Standing with fellow confederate sympathizers I wanted to make a difference for them. Lincoln is wrong and someone needs to change. “I had a splendid chance… to kill the president where I stood” (American Experience: TV's Most-watched History Series). After he gave his speech, I was ready to leave. I believe Lincoln is determined to destroy the beloved south and overthrow the Constitution (Hanmer). A few of us decided to go and talk about what we could do to fix the problem we have. Lewis Powell, George Artzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen and John Surratt arrived at my house to conspire with me. …show more content…
We could kidnap him,” I said with a huge devious smile on my face. “Except how exactly will we do this? What’s our plan?” Everyone was saying different ideas, some there was no way, other were okay. I finally thought about “capturing Lincoln in his box at Ford’s and lowering the president to the stage with ropes,” but I quit acting to focus on kidnapping Lincoln and have spent nearly $10,000 so far to outfit my band of kidnappers (Hamner). Today is March 17, 1865, also known as the day Lincoln is going to be kidnaped. I and my fellow conspirators are hiding in the bushes along a county road in Washington, D.C., waiting for the president’s carriage that is supposed to carry Lincoln to Campbell Hospital (Klein). After waiting for hours we realized that Lincoln was not coming. I am mad now, I want that man to get what he deserves. So at that moment I realized I didn’t want to just kidnap Lincoln, I want to kill him. After only days of thinking about killing Lincoln, I thought about who else just might stand in my way. So I decided we, me and my fellow conspirators, would not only kill Lincoln but also Grant, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson
During Abraham Lincoln’s presidency at the start of the 1860, an issue that had divided the nation was slavery. Lincoln’s election to presidency as a republic was not received well by the Southern slave states, as they thought that as a republican he was out to abolish slavery. In an effort to calm southern states and keep them from seceding from the United States, he attempts to ease them with his First Inaugural Address. In his First Inaugural Address his key points are to clam southern leaders of slave states, keep the states from seceding, and make them at ease as he enters presidency.
He asked his listeners if the nation was to become endangered, would it sprout from overseas or from within the nation. He was referring to the mobs and others going against the laws of the nation. In the Lyceum Address, Lincoln went on to say that if danger “ever reach us it must spring up amongst us,” and that “we must ourselves be its author and finisher”. He thought that “as a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide”. Lincoln believed that if the nation continued on its destructive path by ignoring the rule of law, the nation in return would destroy itself.
In the North, many people wanted Lincoln to let the South become a separate nation, but he wanted unity between the North and South. But when the war started in 1861 no one, not even Lincoln, could have foreseen the four years of the horrendous bloodshed that was to come. The corpses of American boys would be shoveled into the earth - hundreds and thousands of them.
Five days after the Confederacy’s surrender, John Wilkes Booth had successfully killed one of the most influential presidents in American history to do what he believed would redeem power to the southern states. Booth’s main goal was to tear down the Union’s government by taking down their leader and his successors, but the original plan did not involve the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Historian Christopher Hammer explained in his article "Booth's Reason for Assassination", the former actor had created a group of co conspirators and designed "a ploy on March 17 to capture Lincoln as he traveled in his carriage [and had] collapsed when the president changed his itinerary—and several of Booth’s conspirators ultimately left the group.” (Teaching History). Since the failed capture of the president, Booth hatred towards Lincoln grew after hearing the president’s goal to officially abolish slavery in his Second Presidential
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address Rhetorical Analysis The purpose of this speech is detailed in the time period. This speech was written/spoken at the end of the American Civil war. It is President Lincoln’s way of putting a tentative end to the war and a start to the recovery period. He is still oppressing the south in his diction when he states “Both parties deprecated war: but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
President Abraham Lincoln uses a variety of rhetorical strategies in his Second Inaugural Address to pose an argument to the American people regarding the division in the country between the northern states and the southern states. Lincoln gives this address during the American Civil War, when politics were highly debated and there was a lot of disagreement. Lincoln calls for the people of America to overcome their differences to reunite as one whole nation once more. Lincoln begins his Second Inaugural Address by discussing the American Civil War and its ramifications.
It was given after the Civil War almost as a way to retsore the nation. In the speech Abraham starts off by saying “ Four score and seven years ago” which is significant because that was when the Declaration of Independence was signed and when the colonies gained their freedom fromGreat Britain. He then goes on to say that the founding fathers bulit the nation on liberty and equality for all men, but years later they are fighting to see if its true. He uses atlleration to honor the fallen soliders by saying, “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” To conclude, Abraham Lincoln was a hero to many people but to others he was a man with a questionable motive.
There was another idea when the president was in his carriage to hold it at gunpoint and force him out. They ruled that out because they knew the president would not get out of the carriage. The second reason was that Booth’s henchmen did not want to do it. So he came up with the idea to assassinate President Lincoln.
James L. Swanson Chasing Lincoln’s Killer 2009 Chasing Lincoln’s Killer is a book about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, a past United States of America president. The introduction of the book is how John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s killer, and his accomplices, made a plan to kidnap the American president, but their plan failed. So, John Wilkes Booth and his little gang decide to kill the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State in one night. John Wilkes Booth would kill the president at Ford’s theater, His accomplice George Atzerodt would kill the Vice President at the Vice President’s hotel room. Lewis Powell and David Herold would kill the Secretary of State.
President Abraham Lincoln, in his inaugural address, addresses the topic of the civil war and its effects on the nation and argues that America could be unified once more. He supports his claim by using massive amounts of parallel structure and strong word choice. Lincoln ‘s purpose is to contemplate the effects of the civil war in order to unite the broken America once again. He adopts a very hopeful tone for his audience, the readers of the inaugural address and others interested in the topic of American history and the civil war.
President Lincoln stated that: “if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it,..., and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do it.”. This quote clearly shows that the freedom of slaves was not his concern and unnecessary if it did not help the Union; as the result, slavery still exists if there is no war. Free slave from bondage should be a Great Emancipator’s primary goal and he will do his best to achieve it no matter what, but president Lincoln’s thought differed from that because all he cares was the Union. Although he had many times admitting himself an anti-slavery but his words and thoughts obviously prove that he is
During the history of the United States there have been very respectable speakers Martin Luther King Jr. John F. Kennedy but perhaps no greater leader in American history came to addressing the country like Abraham Lincoln. In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln gave a short speech concerning the effect of the Civil War and his own personal vision for the future of the nation. In this speech Lincoln uses many different rhetorical strategies to convey his views of the Civil War to his audience.
As stated here, "But he also wanted to initiate the uneasy task of bringing the all but defeated South back into the new, more improved Union" ("Abraham Lincoln Biography"). The South hardly had any stamina left. They were hanging on, but barely. Nothing was going to help them. Booth shooting Lincoln didn't help, because even though the South hadn't admitted defeat, they had done everything but.
This statement explains Abraham Lincoln’s final decision to
Abraham Lincoln in the speech, The Gettysburg Address, constructs a point of achieving a "just and lasting peace" between the North and South without retribution. Lincoln supports his assertion by justifying his beliefs of unity between the states. Lincoln's purpose is to influence the people to not allow what has been done to go to waste. He wants his audience to realize that this division will only persist if no one settles the current issues in society. Lincoln speaks in a sympathizing, determined tone to address the Americans who are mourning the loss of their loved ones and to the rest of Americans who he wants to see a change from.