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Lincoln Second Inaugural Address Analysis

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The President of the United states of America, Abraham Lincoln , in his second inaugural address explains to the people of America that “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation.” Lincoln supports his speech by talking about the past and about everything that led up to the war. Lincoln also supports his claim by saying that in the bible that it is wrong to make a profit on the work of enslaved men, based on the color of their skin. Lincoln’s purpose throughout his speech is to address the nation about all of the wrong things that we were doing in our lives that made it hard on the African American slaves living in America at that time. …show more content…

This bill was dangerous because it basically challenged the south’s whole way of life. I’m not saying that the bill was wrong but I think that Lincoln passed it as a way to gain a lead in the civil war, not just for the freedom for African Americans. Lincoln also talks about how we ask God for help in “ wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces” but we still tried to do this. “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, and the war came.” Lincoln says this and it is very true about what happened in our country at that time, but for some reason he never comes out and says that the Union started this war when they bombarded Fort Sumter in

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Lincoln is known for “saving the union” when he destroyed it and made it where it was no longer a voluntary action and forced the south, at gunpoint, to stay in the Union. The Civil War was not started to end slavery but to save the union and for states to no longer have individual rights. After the Civil War was over, taxes were raised in the south but no public benefit was ever seen and therefore most of the money was stolen and pocketed by republican activists. Over all, this war was not needed to free slaves but to reduce the power of the states and make America a more centralized government. Using military force to keep a state from seceding was unthinkable and it quickly became the policy of the Lincoln administration to use deadly force against anyone, including civilians.

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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.

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Within this address, Lincoln captivates a war-torn nation in order to communicate a message of unity to the once opposing sides of the Civil war, North and South, in hopes of being able to convince the people to work together and “bind up the nation’s wounds.” Lincoln’s address is scattered with parallel structure however, its appeal to emotion is most clearly observed when Lincoln utilized it alongside comparative diction to unite North and South as people of similarities rather than differences. In the entirety of his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln never once discussed North and South as two sides of an argument, instead his comparison of them begins as he speaks of how “both parties deprecated the war.” His use of parallel structure then aided this comparison as he details that one side would “make war rather than let the nation survive;

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Lincoln was confident about his beliefs of the end of slavery especially when he had wrote out a letter to an author but he never sent it. The letter Lincoln never sent stated that Americans traveling thousands of miles only to capture and bring home the African Americans just to make them slaves is brought upon us by the black race (Danoff 49). Lincoln was furious with the author’s statement and retaliated back with sarcasm. After many states had reestablished their state governments or prepared to they were creating state constitutions that abolished slavery (Brands 3). Life was unfair for African Americans, especially those who were free.

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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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In this moment of time, everybody should be embarrassed and ashamed for what they caused. Taking a deeper look at ‘”the war came”’, Lincoln leaves out the side who caused this because his attention is not solely on who to put the blame of the war on but, to reinforce the fact the North and the South has experienced an equal amount of great

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Lincoln's uses rhetorical strategy throughout his Second Inaugural Address was the use of an appeal to his audience's emotions. This is evident during his entire speech Lincoln continuously revert to religious evidence of some sort to support his claim. He says that although it may seem absurd for slavery's proponents to be allowed to pray to God, that his audience and he should “judge not that [they] be not judged,” alluding to the Lord's Prayer and appealing to his audience's Christian beliefs. He continues religion when talking about the Christians, he states, “Fondly do [they] hope, fervently do

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Abraham Lincoln’s Establishment of Impartiality During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln served his presidency to the United States (U.S.) during one of the most decisive and divisive time periods in the nation’s history. Lincoln began his presidency shortly after the official formation of the Confederacy in the Southern states of the U.S. President Lincoln delivered his first Inaugural Address in 1861 to an already divided nation with the knowledge that the potential for a civil war was growing and that conflict was imminent. Taking the reins of a nation that was seemingly at irreconcilable odds, Lincoln served his first four-year term as president from 1861-1865; a time period that saw the violence of the American Civil War engulf and divide an entire nation. Near the end of the Civil War in 1865, Lincoln was elected for a second presidential term. It was during Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address in March of 1865 that he was tasked with again speaking before a divided

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Lincoln goes on with saying that it is God, not the Union or the Confederacy, that brought upon the Civil War. He claims that it is their punishment for slavery that their creator forced such a devastating event among them. By associating the cause of the war – and all its devastation – with that of the Divine, Lincoln brings forth not a single feeling of

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In his first inaugural address, March 4, 1861, Lincoln expressed his view that, “one section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes that it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute,” it must be noted that, Lincoln originally resisted calls for abolition, because “he did not want to alienate border-state Unionists and northern Democrats,” but “with war threatening, Lincoln [made a calculated move] by sending armed ships to resupply Fort Sumter. [In response] Davis ordering the bombing of the fort on April 12, 1861. This attack marked the beginning of the Civil War,” (Two Viewpoints; Goldfarb, 59; America’s Stories). This type of war was completely new and thus “required a new kind of political leader, one with skills not only to direct armies but also to guide the energies of the citizenry toward victory.

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Lincoln was well educated over current case-law problems pertaining too slave and free states. Over one of the worst decisions ever made by the Supreme Court, the Dred Scott decision threatened to bring slavery into the North. Lincoln was stressing the fact that if something wasn’t done, slavery would no doubt trickle out of the South, and into the rest of America. While the Supreme Court was fumbling and backtracking, there was another law that brought slavery closer. The Kansas-Nebraska bill overrode previous legislation and allowed white male residents to vote on whether to permit slavery therein.

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793 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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581 Words | 3 Pages

The 16th president of the united states, Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address, Lincoln states that though the first inaugural speech was important, there was an even more important topic at hand now. He talks about how even with the war coming to an end, blacks and whites are still be treated differently and he is very against this. He first supports his claim by saying that blacks and whites are equal by that they pray to the same God and pray the same prayers yet they are not equal in the eyes of society. He then goes on to say that in the end God will judge us all the same. Lincoln’s purpose of this statement is to say that he is against inequality in order to make a country that is not at ends with each other over the color of someone 's skin.

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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

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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.

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