Lincoln Rhetorical Essay

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AP Rhetorical Essay The day was March 4th, 1865. The Great Civil War had been ongoing for four lengthy years. With the war reaching its end and Abraham Lincoln reelected for his second term in office, Americans clouded the nation’s capital to hear Lincoln addressing the nation’s conflicts on the Civil War and America’s future. As Lincoln gets ready to make his Second Inaugural Address, he wants the audience to accept his point of view which was that the North and South should settle their feud, end the war and reunite to become one nation. Throughout the Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln has different methods up his sleeve to endeavor and grab the audience so they may bury the hatchet and agree on his point of view. In the beginning of the Second Inaugural Speech, Lincoln speaks about how the war started in a clever way which both North and South are to be blame. This makes the audience feel remorseful because they know that there could have been a way or chance to avoid America’s bloodiest war. Lincoln stated “All dreaded it, all sought to avert it,” he goes on to say that insurgents sought to avoid it by negotiations. “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” In those quotes, Lincoln doesn’t clarify which region of the nation wanted war and which one accepted it, also who wanted to make the negotiations. With that vague description, the audience could not tell if it were the North or South. This implies that no one region is really at fault for the outburst of war, but it is the fault of the whole country. This makes the audience feel that they were the reason for why a war started. The South cannot be overlooked as the catalyst of war, for the North is equally at fault for not being able to avoid the war. This ties
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