Rhetorical Analysis Of Lincoln's Inaugural Address

It would be more than difficult not to read Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address without some sense of pride or honor for one’s own country. He brings about a call to civility among all citizens striving for unity and harmony with one another. Lincoln understood the dilemma that slavery became for not only the Northerners attempting to abolish the practice entirely, but also for the Southerners perpetuating it in the first place. The fact that there was a faction rising in favor of slavery on a scale that would divide the country indefinitely and that Lincoln foresaw this danger demonstrates the level of prudence he was able to acquire up until his presidency. In this address, Lincoln stressed the importance of the nation staying unified and true to the principles set by

During President Lincoln’s second inaugural address, the audience expected the speech to be on politics, slavery, and states’ rights. Instead, the speech was on the effects of civil war and gave his vision for the future of the nation. While doing so, he uses rhetorical strategies to achieve his purpose, which is to convince his audience to unite so they can move forward and fix their broken nation. With Lincoln’s main goal of linking the North and the South into one, he tends to use words such as each, both, neither, we, and us. Even though at the time they were looked at as two separate territories, this is his attempt of verbally joining the two as one, painting a picture of unity so that eventually they can work together to “bind up the nation’s wounds.”

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.

The major claim of Lincoln's speech was that the North's best course of action was to continue fighting the war, which he supported by the evidence of the Northerners' shared senses of morality and patriotism. Lincoln's position in this speech relies on ethos, or appeal to the character of the rhetor. The appeal to ethos exists partly because he already has some ethos from being the president of the Union. His audience respect him as their leader, so they will be likely to listen to what he has to say. However, Lincoln also builds his ethos throughout the speech.

A question that has left many Americans puzzled is, was the civil was inevitable? Could the United States of America survived without the famous war? Would America be split in half? To answer this question one must look back and the reason the civil war happened and how it affected America.

The Civil War was a time period of social, political, and economic tensions. The North and South fought to decide whether to stop or continue slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the then president, addresses the two crowds before and after the war; however, in the second address, after the war, he uses specific literary devices to convey his message, of the need to end slavery. Abraham Lincoln uses varied sentence structure and appeals, in his succinct Second Inaugural Speech, to try to bring back harmony in the states and the abolitionment of slavery. Abraham Lincoln uses varied sentence structure to emphasize his message of harmony and abolition of slavery.

In his Second Inaugural Address, President Abraham Lincoln addressed the topic of the Civil War and argued that the nation needed to change. He supported his claim with parallel structure to highlight the differences between the North and South, then mentioning biblical references to express the importance of religion, and finally the diction he used helped join the citizens together. President Lincoln’s purpose was to express the similarities between the North and South in order to unify the country once again. He uses a critical, yet hopeful tone towards the Americans of both the North and South. Just one month before the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln gave his Second Inaugural Address in the hopes of reuniting the country once

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.

It is seen clearly in his word choice that Lincoln calls for a lasting and fair peace, but not only between the North and South. He also calls the American people to apply this concept of peace with other countries and in foreign policy. Throughout his Second Inaugural Address, President Abraham Lincoln employs a variety of rhetorical strategies to promote unity between Americans. As Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

At the beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s second term as the president of the United States, he was confronted with a severely split nation fighting in the bloodiest battle in American history. Lincoln had hoped that, by fighting the South and having them rejoin, he could keep the Union together. Although the Union troops eventually managed to force the Confederates to surrender, a cultural divide remained as the Confederate states were forced to reunite with the North and the North became more hesitant in their determination to subdue the South. Since governing a country in this state would be nearly impossible, Lincoln decided to address both the North and South in his speech by asking them to set aside their disagreements so that the split nation could be repaired. His speech, despite being very brief, connected with both sides through the use of ethos, logos, and pathos which helped him achieve his goal of keeping the

(Swanson pg.9) He could not stand another Union victory over the Confederacy. Mr. Lincoln had sat by the first and last president of the Confederate State of America. (John was willing to throw away fame, wealth for a promising future for the cause of his Confederacy).(Swanson pg.10) Booth’s eyes lit up when he heard that the president would be coming to Ford’s theater.

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.

During a time in history when the United States was as divided as it had ever been, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address. The Civil War had been raging for four years, and victory was in sight for the Union. Many northern politicians wanted Lincoln to harshly punish and humiliate the South for all of the violence that its succession had caused. However, part of the wisdom that turned Lincoln into an iconic president was his intent to end the war “with malice towards none, with charity for all” and “ to bind up the nation's wounds, [and] to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan” (Second Inaugural Address).

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.