Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Essay

960 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Abraham lincoln first inaugural address analysis

Lincoln 2nd Inaugural Speech Analysis

Abraham Lincoln is considered by many people to be best president of the United States, and is also viewed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest speakers of the Western world. What makes Lincoln’s speeches so effective is not the length, but the rhetoric power that the speech brings. In the majority of his speeches, Lincoln utilizes either the elements of ethos, logos, and pathos to captivate his audience; however, in his 2nd Inaugural address, he successfully combines all three rhetorical elements to make his speech all the more impactful. In his 2nd Inaugural address, Lincoln uses powerful rhetorical techniques, such as parallelism, biblical allusion,appeal to authority, active voice, and a consistent …show more content…

The reason that he does this is not to make the audience forget the war, but to establish a vision of prosperity, something that the audience can strive to work towards each and every day. By comparing the nation to an injured animal, Lincoln states that the Civil War will eventually fade into a scar, a scar that will serve as a reminder that freedom is not free and that the past must never be forgotten. The continuous use of God throughout his final paragraphs suggest that only God is the one who can determine reason from wrong, and that God has the final say on the duration and effect of the war. The entirety of this speech is also viewed as a warning to the audience, a warning that shows just how weak humanity really is. Lincoln’s primary message is that of sadness with small amounts of hope. Instead of using condemning language he uses words like “cherish”, “achieve”, “strive”, and “peace” to show that he also forgives those who were for slavery. He establishes hope in the audience by using pathological imagery of a “widow and his orphan’” stating that those who gave their lives, for the right reason, died for the future of the country, a future that was greater than their own

Show More
Related

  • Richard Hofstadter's American Political Tradition By Abraham Lincoln

    1213 Words  | 3 Pages

    By the time of his speech South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas had already seceded from the Union. In his speech Lincoln had three main points: “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government,” secession was impossible because the Union was unbreakable, and that any use of arms against the United States would be met with force but he would never be first to attack (Grafton 80). Lincoln aspired to increase his support in the North without alienating the South where most disliked him in fear of the end of slavery. In his speech however, Lincoln made it clear that his intention was not to interfere with slavery quoting “I have no purpose, directly, or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so” (Grafton 81). In hope to make amends with the South Lincoln closed by saying “We are not enemies, but friends. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature” (Grafton 81). Although meant to unify the North and South, this address had a larger impact on another

    Read More

  • Lincoln Lyceum Address Thesis

    423 Words  | 1 Pages

    This quote is from Abraham Lincoln, The Lyceum Address, January 27th, 1838, “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.” . The Lyceum Address was given by Abraham Lincoln at age 28. He wanted equality and this is what the Lyceum Address is about. Lincoln wanted slaves to be free, he wanted women to vote and Abraham wanted to raise awareness of the dangers of slavery in the United States of America. The Lyceum address also warned how someone from inside could corrupt the federal government.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Speech

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lincoln's style in this speech was inevitably persuasive. His rhetorical strategy appeals to not only the readers senses, but to their intellectual knowledge as w...

    Read More

  • Juxtaposition In The Gettysburg Address

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.” His use of anaphora by repeating the words “we”, “nation”,and “dedicate” to give emphasis on unity. Juxtaposition is also used in the last line by comparing the soldiers dying to be able to give the nation 's ability to live on. By choosing the words “final resting place” Lincoln and his audience is literally standing on the soldier 's final resting

    Read More

  • Abraham Lincoln's Famous Address, And The Rise Of A President

    686 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lincoln’s Famous Address written by Roselynn Marquez talks about how Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was only 270 words, and it followed a two hour introduction by Edward Everett. Being short was not the only memorable point that the speech had. “Another was the simplicity of its language. As historian Allen Guelzo notes, ‘the address relies on crisp, plain vocabulary.’ He points out that most of the words are only one-syllable. Doris Kearns Goodwin concludes, ‘Lincoln had translated the story of his country...into words and ideas accessible to every American.’ By making his ideas easy to grasp, Lincoln gave them directness and power” (Marquez). The Gettysburg Address to this day is known as a unforgettable expression inscribing the war that took on in the country. In summarization, Abraham Lincoln is known widely for the Address he made in Gettysburg after the battle that took place

    Read More

  • Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Rhetorical Analysis

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lincoln believed that both sides were at fault for the start of the war, and that there was no need to have a war. Even though neither the south nor the north wanted war. They couldn’t come to an agreement over slavery. The south wanted to keep practicing slavery and to expand it to the west. “One-eighth” of the people that lived in the south were “colored slaves.” The slaves were on the side of the north and that may have been what pushed the south over the edge. From what I read in the speech I get the feeling that the south wanted slaves to do their bidding. They didn’t want to do their own work. Maybe they thought that having slaves gave them power over others, but it doesn’t. No one should be under the control of another person; every person’s life matters. The Civil War caused a wave a great sadness throughout the country. So many

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln - An Unlikely Friendship

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...after the Civil War, Frederick Douglass continued to think highly of Lincoln and his great speech. It was hard to believe that before the Civil War, the two men disagreed and fought over the greatest and most awful sin committed, slavery. But they found a way to form the friendship that would last throughout history. It was his famous quote that really brought attention. He had said of the sixteenth president, “His greatest mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery . . . . taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln.”

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis of The Gettysburg Address

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    Four and a half months after the Union defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. He gave the Union soldiers a new perspective on the war and something to fight for. Before the address, the Civil War was based solely on states’ rights. Lincoln’s speech has the essence of America and the ideals that were put into the Declaration of Independence by the founders. The sixteenth president of the United States was capable of using his speech to turn a war on states rights to a war on slavery and upholding the principles that America was founded upon. By turning the Civil War into a war that was about slavery he was able to ensure that no foreign country would recognize the south as an independent nation, thus ensuring Union success in the war. In his speech, Lincoln used the rhetorical devices of juxtaposition, repetition, and parallelism.

    Read More

  • Pathos In The Gettysburg Address

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    This helped develop the central idea by pulling at heartstrings. The device Lincoln used for this main idea is pathos and sentence structure. First, he uses pathos when he says, ‘’Now we are in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.’’ This appeals to our hearts because during wars, blood is shed. Notably, he uses pathos when he states, ‘’We have come here to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.’’(Lincoln, 1) This appeals to the heart since people lost their lives; this device moves us to do what is asked. Likewise, he uses sentence structure and pathos when he says, ‘’The world will little note, nor long remember what we have to say here, but it can never forget what they did here.’’(Lincoln, 1) The commas make the sentence more slow and fitting as he continues to honor the deaths. Lincoln’s use of pathos and sentence structure pull heavily at our

    Read More

  • Lincoln Inaugural Address Analysis

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    He had just beaten out George B. McClellan for president. McClellan wanted the country split into two- one slave-holding and one free. However, the country had chosen Lincoln, they wanted the country to stay together. People wanted too much of Lincoln. He would have enemies no matter what choice he made. So now, instead of staying passive like he did in his first Inaugural Address, he took a stand in his second. He told the country that God sent the slaves to them early in this country, but now He wanted them gone. The war was a punishment from God for all slaveholders. Lincoln made this a rallying cry for all northerners, telling them that they would fight “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” This war would be bloody, but if they could only keep fighting a little more, there would be success at the

    Read More

  • Diction In The Gettysburg Address

    663 Words  | 2 Pages

    Also he uses the words hallow, consecrate, and dedicate, “ But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot hallow , we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground (Lincoln , line 9,10) . Also “... who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced” (lincoln, line 14). Lincoln is trying to make himself more respectable using his diction. Also he is trying to make the family’s who lost loved ones , think even more highly of the soldiers. The way he used diction works because it makes his point of that they can advance through what they lost and remember what they were fighting for in the first place. It overall comforted those who have lost loved ones, the speech made it more like they nobly died instead of just another soldier dying in a

    Read More

  • Gettysburg Address Rhetorical Analysis

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    By turning the Civil War into a war about slavery he effortlessly ensured that no foreign country would recognize the South as an independent nation, ensuring Union success in the war. In his speech, Lincoln used the rhetorical devices of juxtaposition, repetition, and parallelism, to touch the hearts of its listeners. Lincoln had numerous purposes for the Gettysburg Address. Firstly, it was to be used to dedicate the land where the Battle of Gettysburg had taken place as a cemetery for the fallen troops of both the North and the South, the most apparent and central reason for his address. His second purpose for the address was to transform the war on states’ rights into a war on slavery and upholding the ideals that the Founders had authored in the Declaration of Independence.

    Read More

  • Death In The Civil War Essay

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    But in reality that was just an excuse to real cause, the abolishment of slavery. The southern states didn’t want to have their slaves taken away and Lincoln told them that they could retain their slaves, if they were to join back into the Union. Slavery was the fundamental for the Civil War, it made soldiers become “hard,” numb, and “calloused” or indifferent to others deaths in prospect of their own death. Slavery was mostly killing, which was the essence of the

    Read More

  • Values In Lincoln And Obama's Second Inaugural Speeches

    771 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the strongest basic values that Lincoln expressed was that the civil war as a devastating situation for most people. He expressed this by saying, “Both parties deprecated war.” Meanwhile, a more fragile basic value of his speech is the classification of the South as the destructive force and the North as the protective one. He said, “But one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive. And the other would accept war rather than let it perish.” This value splits the public into two factions (Hansen 244) that was defined by Lincoln as “good” and “bad”.

    Read More

  • President Abraham Lincoln's Second Annual Message To Congress

    299 Words  | 1 Pages

    The speaker is President Abraham Lincoln. The source is is his renown second Annual Message to Congress, a written message submitted on Dec. 1, 1862, and read aloud by the secretary of the Senate.

    Read More

More about Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Essay

Open Document