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In Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, President Lincoln addresses a divided nation. Both

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In Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, President Lincoln addresses a divided nation. Both the Union and the Confederacy are bitter to each other towards the end of the war. However, Lincoln calls both the north and the south to set aside their issues that divided them in order to heal their broken nation. Lincoln uses a slew of rhetorical methods in his speech such as tone, diction, and syntax to further assist him in achieving his purpose of uniting the nation. Lincoln’s optimistic tone encourages all Americans to put behind them the Civil War and progress forward as a united nation once more. President Lincoln calls to action all the peoples of America with sentences such as, “let us strive on to finish the work we are in” and …show more content…

A pathway of reconciliation and healing is what President Lincoln wishes for the country. Lincoln also personifies the nation as having “wounds” which the American people must now bind up in order to heal and save the nation from death. The phrase, “bind up” invokes the emotion of healing not only the personal wounds suffered by the American people because of the war, but also the wounds of the nation as a whole. After the nations wounds have been bound, then “lasting peace” will follow, as with the unity of the nation. President Lincoln also reminds the people of their similarities and focuses on their same religious belief and God by stating, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God”. In doing this Lincoln emphasizes the similarities of both the north and south in order to reunite them after the Civil War crisis. Lincoln’s speech also contains a balanced syntax to highlight the idea of a united and balanced nation by using a combination of long and shot sentences in his speech. An example of a long sentence would be one like, “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”, and an example of a short sentence would be one like the following: “All dreaded it, all sought to avert it.” The

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