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Rhetorical Analysis Of The South Must Strike While There Is Yet Time

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Prolific for its apocalyptic portrayal President Abraham Lincoln’s Election, the speech delivered by Senator Robert Toombs to the state legislature in Georgia reveals anxieties of Southerners about the longevity of their lifestyle. Utilizing passionate rhetoric, The South Must Strike while There Is Yet Time displays how the future of the Union remains gloomy and unpredictable. Addressing the fellow legislators with vigorous pathos, the speech details how the security of Southern values remains paramount to the decision of secession. Moreover, Toombs features the question of slavery and its expansion heavily in his speech, deeming it the quality most necessary to preserve to preserve the Southern way of life. As Lincoln has been perceived by Southerners to support radical …show more content…

Written with fervour, Toombs articulates how Lincoln’s election dooms the South to have their culture overwritten by northern lawmakers. Dwelling on the issue of slavery, the speech presents the argument that the new Republican President would violate each citizen’s right to property as affirmed in the Constitution. Believing that Lincoln would undermine this principle, Toombs exclaims that Southerners “stand without a shield, with bare bosoms presented to our enemies.” (57) This allusion to the sectionalist divide that causes the Secession Crisis presents the Northern states as aggressors against the traditions of the South. Revealing the anxieties towards this northern aggression, the speech vilifies Republicans for their coercive approach to political reform. Moreover, Republicans are presented as a single-issue party of abolitionists throughout the work, which reveals how this “horde” worried Southerners in a time of uncertainty. (58) The unconditional drive to prohibit the expansion and abolish the institution of slavery concerns Southerners, as it would

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