AP Language - Abraham Lincoln Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Rhetorical Analysis Before entering his second presidential election, Abraham Lincoln addressed a war torn nation to persuade the North and South to come back together, while regarding the South’s fault. The president manipulates several rhetorical strategies and devices to achieve his purpose. His reassuring tone alone with parallelism, biblical allusions and personification allow him to help unify the divided country and chastise the South. Lincoln sets the stage for his speech with a subtle sense of optimism. He mentions promising phrases such as “encouraging to all” and “high hope for the future” to emphasize that both sides of the country can recover from the impending civil war. Through his positive tone, Lincoln suggests that the reconciliation of the North and South will allow America to have a bright future. Furthermore, Lincoln portrays war as a common enemy of the North and South, and indicates that both sides are connected through his use of parallel structures. For example, he describes the country as a living organism being endangered by the phrase, “let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish”. Even though he views the South as aggressors, Lincoln ends that quote with “the war came” to characterize war as an independent being. This demonstrates that either side did not bring on the war, because the war came by itself. In addition, he articulates, “neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained.” Thus, Lincoln illustrates that both the North and South share a similarity: their hatred towards war. Moreover, Lincoln refers to the Bible throughout his speech to accentuate that both the North and South share the same religious principles, thus appealing to ethos. He indicates that, “both [sides] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invoked His aid against the other.” Therefore, Lincoln forces the North and South to acknowledge that they both