Rhetorical Analysis of Lincoln's Second Second Inaugural Address

Christofer Smith • December 17, 2025 • 942 Words

Introduction

With the end of the American Civil War in sight, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address to an audience drained by a war which had taken hundreds of thousands of lives. Although his address was unexpectedly short, President Lincoln strategically employs the strategies of historical recounting, religious appeals, and a unifying tone to convey his sentiments towards the four-year Civil War and his hope for an undivided future.

Acknowledging the Past

In his third paragraph, President Abraham Lincoln asserts that “one eight of the whole population were colored slaves… localized in the [South]... all knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war” (Lincoln 3). He does so in accordance with the situation at hand: in 1863, one year before his Second Inaugural Address, he had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, liberating the enslaved in ‘areas of conflict’ — sections of the South that his Union Army had occupied, and thus, controlled. In doing so, he refocused the goal of the war to center around what had caused South Carolina, the first state to secede from the United States, to do so: slavery. By beginning the main body of his Second Inaugural Address with an acknowledgement of the critical role slavery played in the ongoing conflict, President Lincoln shows his audience that not only is his stance anti-slavery, as demonstrated by such a bold move against slavery, but that he is aware that his audience, whether in agreement or disagreement with him, is of the same understanding that it is such an institution that had caused the division he discusses. He follows with the statement that “to strengthen, perpetuate, and extend [slavery] was the object for which [the South seceded and declared war] while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it” (Lincoln 3). Here, the President attempts to set the record of his goals straight with his audience, of whom he understands would spread far beyond the crowd in front of him, as his speech would likely reach members of the Southern Confederacy. In demonstrating that initially, he had no urge to abolish slavery, but rather, to simply stop the spread of the institution, he highlights how the discussion over slavery, in his eyes, had escalated from a simple disagreement to now drastic measures, including the Civil War thrust upon everyone, and the aforementioned Emancipation Proclamation, which to a Southern audience, was overbearing and painted President Lincoln as tyrannical and encroaching on their freedoms. Throughout the first half of this paragraph, he recounts the recent history, as he saw it, that brought him, the crowd, and even the Southerners his Address may have reached, to where they stood that day.

Connecting the Future and Religion

President Lincoln continues the latter half of his third paragraph with direct appeals to religion. He advises his audience, “it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us not judge, not that we be judged” (Lincoln 3). Here, the President acknowledges what his anti-slavery crowd may have felt: a desire to paint the pro-slavery South as immoral practitioners of a cruel institution. This is not to President Lincoln’s benefit, however — he sought unity, not division; peace, not conflict. To achieve this, Lincoln ties this message to what much of his audience, North or South, Union or Confederate, practiced: religion. The use of references to God’s judgment conveys the weight of the act of judging the other that President Lincoln attempts to steer his audience away from. He continues with this strategy, urging his listeners to “suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses… [that] He now wills to remove…” (Lincoln 3). This discussion of God’s will relates back to Lincoln’s history-centric opening, but in the new light of the future: that perhaps this great Civil War is enacted upon the divided nation by the almighty God they believed in, that slavery was against His divine attributes. In doing so, Lincoln unites his discussion of the historical past with the future, and that it is time to reconsider the status of slavery in a country that claims to be under God.

Unity through Diction

Throughout this third paragraph, and his entire Second Inaugural Address, for that matter, President Lincoln deliberately applies his historical and religious lenses with unifying, unaccusatory diction. Never does he use his words to point a finger at the South, but rather, he opens with a greeting to his “fellow countrymen” (Lincoln 1) before his assertions that “all dreaded [the Civil War] ~ all sought to avert it” (Lincoln 2) . This is President Lincoln’s method of disarming those opposed to him, seeking to invoke unity — a core tenet of his presidency, as he sought to restore the Union following the secession of the South. He further conveys this sense of togetherness at the conclusion of his Address, “with malice toward none… let us strive on to finish the work [they all] are in to bind up the nation’s wounds” (Lincoln 4). In doing so, President Abraham Lincoln challenges his audience — not just the members of the Union in front of him, but any Southerner who had received his Address, and any slave, emancipated or chained — that everyone was in a position of power to help bring the great Civil War to a close, and to reunite what was once an undivided country under God. Throughout his Second Inaugural Address, President Abraham Lincoln conveys such. In citing the history before, the future after, and the interplay of unity amongst all of it, he signals to all he could reach that unity is what he desired most.

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