Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address uses different kinds of rhetorical strategies to unite a broken nation. During the time of his speech and his speaking about what’s going, it was four years into the civil war and it was about to end. Lincoln uses allusion, parallel structure so he could unify the north and south.Rhetorical strategy was seen in Lincolns speech would be allusion. How he used God and the bible to show that the people from the north and south had the same kind of values.
He also mentioned “Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Simlarity on how both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and invoke his aid against the other.With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, 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, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.’ In the delivery of Lincoln’s ‘Second Inaugural,’ many were inspired by this uplifting and keen speech. It had been a long war, and Lincoln was concerned about the destruction that had taken place.
Worn-out from seeing families torn apart and friendships eradicated, he interpreted his inaugural address. March of 1865, and the war, he believed, must come to an end.
