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Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Rhetorical Devices

622 Words3 Pages

Jaime Polit
3/22/2016
Rhetoric

Rhetoric in Lincolns 2nd inaugural speech & Dickinson poem Rhetoric is a powerful tool in communication that has the ability to ultimately influence an audience towards an action or belief. Although it has a negative reputation as a device used to deceive or confuse by using words in an unfamiliar and odd sequence, the use of ethical rhetoric can serve useful in situations where a certain topic may be deemed too sensitive for direct formal communication or to explain concepts that may conflict with popular belief. Two artifacts that provide an example of this is are Abraham Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address” concerned with the Civil War and Emily Dickinson “Success is counted sweetest”. Both employ language in an unorthodox way and use literary devices to enhance their ideas and can be considered rhetoric as they encompass the four resources.
Lincolns …show more content…

He uses parallel sentences to compare sides fairly with quotes like “one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let the nation perish”. The line “malice for none, and charity for all” uses contrast to emphasize opposites and focuses on the positive by using antithesis. The sentence “and the war came” is an example of passive structure as it has no subject, making it hard to pin blame on anyone. To diffuse this feeling of a nation divided, in his speech, Lincoln alludes to the war as the cause of a divine consequence for human slavery and tries to convince them that the war was a tragedy for all. The rhetorical device he used to make this point is repetition by mentioning God fourteen times, quoting text from the bible four times, and invoking prayer four times. By using this method, he was using ethos and logos to appeal to the nation’s belief in God to explain why the war

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The entirety of Lincoln's speech is based on a specific quote from Matthew 12:25 in the Bible, in which Jesus says, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." By doing this, Lincoln hopes to establish credibility in the rest of his speech, because it's basis is the Bible. However, Lincoln does not use the quote in the way that is expected of a straightforward quote from the Bible. The quote could have easily been used to put the message that if the country doesn’t resolve its’ issues on slavery then the country will be consumed by chaos and the country will fall, but Lincoln immediately says that he does not expect or want the Union to end. He makes it seem

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