Compare And Contrast The Gettysburg Address And The Second Inaugural Address
Explaination: Though delivered almost 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln’s (1809-1865) second inaugural address continues today to be an exemplary model of leadership, demonstrating its abilities in political unification, cues to nation-building, goals of social progression, and most importantly, its expression of the importance of national reconciliation. Given at a time when a young American country was still reeling from the Civil War, Lincoln’s address not only reaffirmed the Union’s justification for fighting against Confederate secession and insurgency, but also extended a hand to the formerly rebellious states that found themselves structurally and economically debilitated by the end of the war. A work of oratory mastery, Lincoln’s content was not nearly as important as the address’ literary devices such as assonance, alliteration, and diction. Then-president Lincoln’s style and delivery prove that today’s politicians and leadership stand much to gain from the model presented at Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The beginning of Lincoln’s final term saw a distressed nation left economically and structurally ravaged. Costing the lives of more Americans than any war in its short history, the Civil War was the product of a social, economic, and political rift between the Northern Union and the insurgent Southern Confederacy of secessionist states. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address therefore had to satisfy several requisites. The speech had to take special care to give praise where due to the Northern Union army and its loyal population without alienating the defeated South, still reeling from the economic blow dealt to its agrarian majority by the abolition of slavery. In order to maintain this delicate balance, “Lincoln began the shift in content and tone that would give” the second inaugural address “its singular meaning,” inclusive to both North and South (White 61). In his Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, Ronald C. White makes note of Lincoln’s “masterful understanding and use of both imagery and distinctive phrase,” tools that America’s sixteenth president would use as part of an “overarching strategy” emphasizing “common actions and emotions” (White 61). George Rable stressed the importance of non-political language in Lincoln’s address in his The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics, as the Southern population was infamously apolitical in its views and practices. Lincoln’s diction therefore had to be deliberately neutral in diction and content so as not to highlight the existing tension between North and South, the major differences manifested in the stereotypes of the prototypical agrarian Southerner and politicized, industrial Northerner. Lincoln was less “intellectual and studied in tone” in delivering his second inaugural address, focusing more on religious allusions and spiritual reference (White 22). A key feature of the address, Lincoln’s use of religious overtones was neutral in its acceptance in both the North and South. Though taking great care to give the North credit for “accepting the war rather than let it perish” (Lincoln, lines 17-18) Lincoln did his best not to alienate the South but also took great care not to indemnify the insurgents in the face of his loyal Union constituency. To avoid a potentially catastrophic venture, Lincoln used Christianity and references to Protestant texts shared by both national contingents. With such radically different constituents, religion was the only common ground, resulting in a final address that notorious author and black activist Frederick Douglass found more akin to a “sermon than a speech” (White ii). Lincoln’s religious allusions served to emphasize national unity in similarity, as seen in lines 29-30 in his reference to Northern and Southern populations “both [reading] the same Bible and [praying] to the same God.” Furthermore, Lincoln alluded to religion as a mechanism to displace blame on either party for the violence that transpired following the Confederate secession from the Union. In lines 29-32, Lincoln urges the two halves of the nation to “judge not” its counterpart lest they in turn “be judged”. Placing the final victory in an intangible God’s proverbial hands, the politically masterful president did not place the moral imperative in the hands of either North or South, instead referencing the “Almighty’s [purposes]” in line 30 which in turn were assumed in the Judeo-Christian tradition incomprehensible by man. The heavily religious theme of the address kept abreast of the apocalyptic undertones of the war. In such a fractious time in American politics, both sides endorsed the distribution of their own versions of the Bible.
