Through the Lenses of Rhetoric: A Classical Look at Lincoln’s Second Inaugural
In 2021, I taught a course on the Trivium for the first time, and have taught it several times since. There is nothing like teaching for learning, and I have learned a great deal as I have taught, especially about rhetoric. I had taught small portions of Aristotle’s Rhetoric before, but remained ignorant of most of it, and I knew almost nothing about later traditions of rhetoric. I still think of myself as merely an advanced beginner in rhetoric rather than a professor of it, but I am becoming an amateur, a lover. Aristotle’s Rhetoric has educated me in the range of the orator’s understanding of the minds and hearts of ordinary people, while the traditional canons of rhetoric, its various figures, and the exercises of progymnasmata have improved my approach to speaking and to analyzing the speeches of others.
Though I have been a passionate as well as professional reader of great texts, I find I am gaining significant insight into and appreciation of historically great speeches. Getting to know the trees in the forest of rhetoric (especially through the Silva Rhetoricae website) has led me to ask certain questions habitually and in an orderly way, helping me get inside the mind of the author. I have learned to think about the occasion and the audience, distinguish appeals to logos and pathos and ethos, understand the flow of a speech and the choices made by its author through the canons of invention and arrangement. I am even beginning to become conversant with the common figures, tropes, and schemes.
It has been a particular joy to gain greater insight into Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. I have always loved the speech for its deeply moving conclusion - “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right….” Yet, in spite of having read it many times in my career, even studying it carefully on several occasions, I had still found it a difficult speech to follow. Lincoln seems to wander around from the conspiracies that took place at his first inauguration to slavery, prayer, and the Almighty, before his culminating exhortation “to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan….” But looking at it through the lenses of classical rhetorical techniques helped bring his order into focus for me.
The most general and encompassing ideas in classical rhetoric are those of Kairos and audience. The first, connected to the occasion giving rise to the speech, leads us to ask what sort of speech would seem appropriate to the formal occasion, as well as what opportunities it offers to the speaker for taking on larger issues. The second makes us ask what is the character and disposition of the audience he is facing? Is he addressing multiple audiences? What difficulties might they present for effective communication? How should he overcome them?
Referring to the formal occasion is often a great introduction, and allows the speaker to let his audience know what he wants to talk about. Lincoln’s first paragraph distinguishes the occasion of this inauguration from that of his first inaugural address; the first demanded a detailed account of how he intended to proceed in a time of crisis, but this does not. He does not tell them what he thinks this occasion really demands. However, he puts aside what his immediate audience might expect - that he would lead them in anticipatory celebrations of imminent triumph - with a gentle understatement: “The progress of our arms…is I trust reasonably satisfactory.” His audience is left wondering what can he say that will be timely now, what does he think they need to hear? Readers of the speech can tell from the conclusion that he wants to bring them to a place where they will put aside all malice and embrace charity for all, even for Southerners. We can imagine how unwelcome that might be.
Arrangement is another central rhetorical consideration. How has the speaker structured his speech? What are its constituent parts, and how does each contribute to his central point? Lincoln uses two structural techniques, the more obvious of which is parallelism. In the second paragraph Lincoln initiates a comparison between the two sides in the war that extends through the rest of the speech.
All dreaded it ~ all sought to avert it. 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. 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.
Parallel sentence structure creates antithesis, which highlights their different purposes: to save the union without war, to destroy it without war; make war rather than let the nation survive; accept war rather than let it perish. But he speaks of their areas of agreement as well as disagreement. They agreed in dreading war. Each recognized that if it had not been for the existence of slaves, there would have been no war. They each expected the war to be over quickly; neither expected the war would bring slavery to an end. Each prayed that God would aid them against the other.
While parallelism is woven throughout the main body of the speech, the speech naturally divides into two sections according to a classical distinction particularly appropriate to a courtroom. First comes a statement of straightforward facts about a dispute (narratio), then comes the proof that establishes the speaker’s main point (confirmatio). The facts should be relatively uncontroversial, yet presented so as to prepare the ground for the controversial argument.
Lincoln presents the facts in a strikingly impersonal way. He does not speak in terms of “we” and “they,” but simply of one side and the other. Lincoln chooses to use the word “party” instead of side, as though bidding the audience to look at the dispute from the impartial standpoint of a judge, one who has seen many disputes in his days, and knows that there is usually plenty of blame to go around.
The second paragraph ends briefly, impersonally, soberly. And the war came. There is no human subject for that sentence, as though the war came on its own, inevitably, apart from any human decision. This ending naturally leads to a question, not “Who started the war? Which side is to blame?” but “How did the war come?” The existence of slaves was, somehow, the cause of the war. The commas in the text no doubt reflect a pause on “somehow”, helping the audience hear that the implicit question has only been vaguely answered. Although other issues were involved, all knew that in some way the war came because the two parties had different intentions with regard to slaves.
As Lincoln begins to move into the hard part, where he must bring his audience to conclusions they might not like, he brings in prayer, the Bible, and God. He references four different Scripture passages in seven sentences. He places his hope to persuade his audience on authority, the highest authority, the most powerful authority in the Union.
He begins by implying a question. No one expected the war to be so big, nor for slavery to cease before the war ended. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both sides prayed that God would be on their side; the magnitude of the war made evident that He was not fully on either side. In another brief, undecorated but powerful sentence, Lincoln expresses the key turn in thought he wishes his audience to have: The Almighty has his own purposes. Those who believe in a providential God must expect that they are not the primary agents in so great an event. The question becomes, not what did each party intend, but what did the Almighty intend?
Lincoln, with the rest of the North, can understand why God would not be on the side of those who prayed that slavery would be extended. Lincoln adapts the language of Genesis 3:19 to suggest the hypocrisy of Christian slave owners: It may seem strange that any should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces…. Yet he immediately invokes Matthew 7 so his audience can hear the warning of Jesus against indulging in such sentiments: “Let us judge not that we be not judged.”
The implicit heartfelt question of the Northern party is, “Why has He not been entirely on our side? Aren’t we the just ones in this dispute? Why have we suffered so much bloodshed and devastation?” Lincoln uses a hypothetical statement to respectfully suggest a providential purpose for the war: God is using it as a scourge to punish those responsible for the evils of slavery. He offers evidence from a Scriptural text: Woe to that man by whom the offenses come. By whom did the offense come? Lincoln must make his audience face the hard truth that both parties share in the guilt of slavery. Though at the beginning of the war, slaves were localized in the South, it had not been so from the beginning of America. …He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came. He names it now, not “Southern slavery”, but “American slavery”, which for 250 years, from the earliest days of the colonies, had brought wealth to the owners and unjust suffering to the slaves. He therefore bids his Christian audience, not to triumph as the just, but to follow Scripture in praising the Lord as they accept His scourge: “...As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
Lincoln educated himself to be a master orator through textbooks and Euclid and Shakespeare and years of advocacy and debate. In this speech, we admire how, having laid the groundwork for his argument with lawyerly objectivity, he brings it home with the forcefulness of a revival preacher, a style that befits an American statesman (as does its brevity), preparing his audience, chastened in both mind and heart, to receive his gentle invitation to embrace a Christian attitude towards the suffering of friend and enemy alike:
With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Dear Reader,
Dear Reader,
At the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path. Many people, if not most, look on literary taste as an elegant accomplishment, by acquiring which they will complete themselves, and make themselves finally fit as members of a correct society. They are secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the same way as they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if suddenly called upon to do so. There are certain things that a man ought to know, or to know about, and literature is one of them: such is their idea. They have learnt to dress themselves with propriety, and to behave with propriety on all occasions; they are fairly "up" in the questions of the day; by industry and enterprise they are succeeding in their vocations; it behoves them, then, not to forget that an acquaintance with literature is an indispensable part of a self-respecting man's personal baggage. Painting doesn't matter; music doesn't matter very much. But "everyone is supposed to know" about literature. Then, literature is such a charming distraction! Literary taste thus serves two purposes: as a certificate of correct culture and as a private pastime. A young professor of mathematics, immense at mathematics and games, dangerous at chess, capable of Haydn on the violin, once said to me, after listening to some chat on books, "Yes, I must take up literature." As though saying: "I was rather forgetting literature. However, I've polished off all these other things. I'll have a shy at literature now."
miraculous. Your faithful friend had never noticed that she was miraculous, nor had about forty thousand other fairly keen observers. She was just a girl. Troy had not been burnt for her. A girl cannot be called a miracle. If a girl is to be called a miracle, then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle.... That is just it: you might. You can. You ought. Amid all the miracles of the universe you had just wakened up to one. You were full of your discovery. You were under a divine impulsion to impart that discovery. You had a strong sense of the marvellous beauty of something, and you had to share it. You were in a passion about something, and you had to vent yourself on somebody. You were drawn towards the whole of the rest of the human race. Mark the effect of your mood and utterance on your faithful friend. He knew that she was not a miracle. No other person could have made him believe that she was a miracle. But you, by the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by the fervour of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite a long time cause him to feel that he had been blind to the miracle of that girl.
The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one's capacity for pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension. It is not to affect one hour, but twenty-four hours. It is to change utterly one's relations with the world. An understanding appreciation of literature means an understanding appreciation of the world, and it means nothing else. Not isolated and unconnected parts of life, but all of life, brought together and correlated in a synthetic map! The spirit of literature is unifying; it joins the candle and the star, and by the magic of an image shows that the beauty of the greater is in the less. And, not content with the disclosure of beauty and the bringing together of all things whatever within its focus, it enforces a moral wisdom by the tracing everywhere of cause and effect. It consoles doubly— by the revelation of unsuspected loveliness, and by the proof that our lot is the common lot. It is the supreme cry of the discoverer, offering sympathy and asking for it in a single gesture. In attending a University Extension Lecture on the sources of Shakespeare's plots, or in studying the researches of George Saintsbury into the origins of English prosody, or in weighing the evidence for and against the assertion that Rousseau was a scoundrel, one is apt to forget what literature really is and is for. It is well to remind ourselves that literature is first and last a means of life, and that the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best to use this means of life. People who don't want to live, people who would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew literature. They had better, to quote from the finest passage in a fine poem, "sit around and eat blackberries." The sight of a "common bush afire with God" might upset their nerves.
is often difficult to see, especially in the present, especially in the midst of great evils, especially for those fighting what JRR Tolkien called “the long defeat.” In similar times, Boethius needed consolation: his major complaint as he sat in prison facing death was that it seemed that the Lord who ruled the heavens and the earth did not rule in the affairs of men.
How many of us have felt this way? “Small hands do them because they must.” My wife, Lisa, and I never expected to do anything great. In Thomas Aquinas College and the community that grew up around it – faith-filled, family-centered, fun and talented – we had our Shire. Our greatest aspiration was to be boring. Great enterprises were for different folks. To try to change the downward spiral of Church and society was for the wiser and stronger. But I came to think I heard the call of the Lord, that the Church wanted me to share my experience of beautiful Catholic education. After discussion, prayer, reflection and consultation, we chose to respond, though we did not know the way.
Americans. It is hard to overestimate the importance of Americans for the Christian classical renewal. It is easy to underestimate the goodness found in the American regime. It is no accident that the renewal of liberal education has begun, is flourishing, and becoming ever more fruitful in America. We are particularly suited to actively undertake great things for the Lord. We are a free people – free in our laws, our institutions, our customs, our traditions, our spirit. Our heroes are those who, though small and insignificant in their origins, undertook great challenges and made great sacrifices to bring something great into the world that had never been before. Our forefathers did not want to rebel, but they cherished freedom with a manly spirit and did what they judged God called them to do: “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Our liberty is a great gift from the Lord and from them. John Adams said to us, “Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.” Let us never disappoint him.
Megan didn’t really know what kids that young could do. But she thought, ‘I’ll throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks.” She started with some scenes that she thought could be really fun for the kids – the witches’ cauldron scene from Macbeth, and the scene featuring the drunken sailors and the monster, Caliban, from The Tempest. It was daring – imagine third graders at a Christian school playing as witches and drunkards. But the kids had a great time!
o the middle of the lid of the chest is fixed externally a hook with rope attached, and now a “being” (what kind of a being is immaterial to us) begins pulling at this with a constant force. The chest together with the observer then begin to move “upwards” with a uniformly accelerated motion. In course of time their velocity will reach unheard-of values—provided that we are viewing all this from another reference-body which is not being pulled with a rope. But how does the man in the chest regard the process? The acceleration of the chest will be transmitted to him by the reaction of the floor of the chest. He must therefore take up this pressure by means of his legs if he does not wish to be laid out full length on the floor. He is then standing in the chest in exactly the same way as anyone stands in a room of a house on our earth. If he release a body which he previously had in his hand, the acceleration of the chest will no longer be transmitted to this body, and for this reason the body will approach the floor of the chest with an accelerated relative motion. The observer will further convince himself that the acceleration of the body towards the floor of the chest is always of the same magnitude, whatever kind of body he may happen to use for the experiment.
wonders. At every level of this science, from the most elementary to the most advanced, we are confronted with the unexpected. Often the seemingly possible turns out to be impossible, and conversely what at first seemed impossible turns out to be possible.
inscribed in a circle exist nowhere in the natural world, much less inscribed dodecahedrons; probably we can't really make tangents to circles. But the delight in geometry and arithmetic does not depend upon being able to find their objects in physical reality; in some way it is enhanced because we are easily convinced that we cannot. We find them in our imagination. And yet they are true and objective -- the imagination is fed by and determined by our experience of sensible reality, as it is empowered by the intellect.
ambassador Francesco Vettori. In it, he describes his exile, his failure to find a job suitable to his literary talent, and his imaginary dinners with the ancients. After lamenting his job as a day laborer and the vulgarity of the commoners, Machiavelli does what most men do not do. The author most known for realpolitik changed his clothes from a laborer into “regal and courtly garments.” It is here where he imagined ancient men – men who died thousands of years ago, who entertain him as their dinner guest. He writes that these long since dead men “receive him in affection,” where he imagines discussions with them for hours concerning the substance of what ultimately goes into The Prince – “what a princedom is, the kinds of princedoms, how one gains them, how they are kept, and why they are lost.”(3) Niccolo writes,