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Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Summary

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During Abraham Lincoln’s childhood, he was raised in a Baptist church, but never joined the church of his parents. Lincoln’s religious views were more realist. He believed that God was not a personal God. God may have created the world, but he does not interfere with our lives. Lincoln was suspicious of the “feeling” religion. He did, however, use his religious raising throughout his childhood. When the six Southern state pulled away from the Union, Lincoln’s religious views began to evolve. He personally didn’t believe in slavery, but was willing to compromise with the South in order to keep the Union together. After his eleven year old son, Willie, passed away from typhoid-like disease, Lincoln’s religious views began to evolve even more. …show more content…

After the Union’s victory and his re-election. President Lincoln gives his Second Inaugural Address (1865), in his speech he addresses the war and the effects of it, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other…. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes….If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time…” He also says, “Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” From the beginning of Lincoln’s presidency to his death, his relationship with God can be seen through his vast amounts of addresses to the country. The events of separation of states, civl war, and death of his son, caused his relationship with God to

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In hindsight, this seems the only way America’s worst moment could end. After some 600,000 American men had died of wounds, or grossly unsanitary medical practice, Lincoln gave his second inaugural address, the famous “charity for all” speech, on March 4, 1865, one month before his death. There is a photograph of him giving this speech, which also shows John Wilkes Booth standing above and behind him, on a balcony. Lincoln ended his speech with these words: “With malice toward none; with charity for all;…let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”

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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.

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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.

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In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln employed various allusions to the Bible in order to show that the Civil War was a form of divine punishment for slavery that could only be amended through “the providence of God” (5). His purpose in his address was to restore hope in the citizens of the Union, and he accomplished this by utilizing Bible verses to create an ethical appeal to the idea that through God, America would be able to prosper in the face of opposition. This shows that Lincoln was well aware of the pride that Americans felt in the idea that the United States is God’s nation, and for many people, this firm belief still exists today. A second example that utilizes the idea that the United States is controlled by the hands of God in order to invoke pride and nationalism is Emmanuel Leutze’s famous painting George Washington Crossing the Delaware. In the painting, an aura of light surrounds George Washington and the American

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In Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address he said, "let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to build up the nation's wounds… and just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. " The main idea of his speech was to end the perilous fight that was the Civil War. Lincoln spoke about how the war needs to pass for the sake of the soldiers and the rest of the nation and that the war would end strong. Lincoln said that if God wishes for the war to continue, then it would because His word is final. When he said "malice toward none, with charity for all" he meant that people should stop fighting and show kindness to all (although at the time women and people of color would still be discriminated against).

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