Ethos In Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

When Lincoln gave his second inaugural address in 1865, he was speaking to the people of the North in the context of the Civil War. This was the rhetorical situation of Lincoln's speech. Lincoln's purpose was to encourage his audience to win the war and reestablish peace between the North and the South. Many people in both the North and the South had expected the war to be fairly short, but four years later, the country was still at war. For this reason, Lincoln might have worried about his audience losing motivation. This concern is reflected in his assumption that neither the North nor the South had initially wanted there to be a war. In this case, Lincoln may have had a skeptical or an undecided audience. To persuade his audience, Lincoln

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. He shows all three types of ethos: sagacity, good moral character, and good will towards his audience. Lincoln shows sagacity, or knowledge and wisdom, when he explains how slavery lead to the Civil War. The North and the South had many disputes over slavery. The South had wanted slavery to spread to new territories, while North had wanted to restrict its spread. In fact, the North had not even planned to abolish slavery altogether. However, Lincoln considers that

The appeal to morality is one type of evidence. Another type of logos that Lincoln uses is the enthymematic argument, an argument where a premise or the conclusion is implied but not stated. There are many reasons that can be deduced why the best thing the North can do is to keep fighting the war, although these reasons are not explicitly stated. For example, Lincoln argues that the Northerners need to fight the war to bring peace, but they might have felt that the disputes over slavery could only end if the North and the South separated completely. However, if the South became its own country, then these disputes would not necessarily be settled. Both countries would likely still want to expand and, in the case of the South, to spread slavery. The South's expansion could easily come into conflict with the expansion of the North. The spread of slavery was the original cause of the Civil War, and it could lead to another war even if the North and the South became separate countries. In contrast, another point Lincoln makes is that neither the North nor the South were originally willing to accept a war. They had each first tried to achieve their goals through negotiation. The war started because neither side could have what it wanted, and they both preferred to declare war than give in to the other side's demands. Therefore, if the people of the North were becoming tired of the