On the Papers. Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

• Author: George D. Gopen
• Pages: 12-15

On the Papers

Published in Litigation, Volume 47, Number 2, Winter 2021. © 2021 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be

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GEORGE D. GOPEN

The author is Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University.

In my On the Papers installment last issue,

I looked with some care at the rhetorical

music and structure of the fourth and final

paragraph of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

Address. This installment deals with the

first two paragraphs of the same speech.

It can stand by itself; but it would benefit

from your reading the last issue’s article

beforehand.

In writing the final paragraph, his per-

oration, of his Second Inaugural Address,

Lincoln had concentrated his rhetoric pri-

marily on lyricism, as he urged the coun-

try to take this moment as the beginning

of the future. He was able to effect that

memorable, musical closure because, in

the previous three paragraphs, he had al-

ready taken care of the rhetorical business

of narration, exposition, and argumenta-

tion. In this edition of On the Papers, we

explore that business as it is done in the

address’s first two paragraphs.

We will find that he is at the top of his

game in manipulating the language in two

different but complementary ways: (1) He

continues to understand in what structur-

al locations of a sentence readers expect to

find certain kinds of information; and (2)

he continues to attend to the music of his

prose, by expanding and contracting its

rhythms. All of these concerns can prove

helpful to you in reaching and controlling

your audience in any legal brief, memo, or

letter you may need to write.

With Union victory all but assured,

just a few weeks prior to Lee’s surren-

der at Appomattox, Lincoln could have

used this occasion for a final rallying of

the troops—for a pounding of the com-

munal chest. He chose not to do so. He

created instead a first paragraph that

is quiet and modest. This was a fitting

prologue for his purpose for the speech

as a whole—to make possible, at its end,

a great moment of rapprochement be-

tween the opposing sides. To achieve

that, Lincoln uses rhetoric to pro-

duce a quiet, calm sense of control. He

does this by his subtle manipulation of

perspective, rhythm, and emphasis, with

rhetorical techniques still viable today.

Perspective for a paragraph as a

whole is controlled in prose by control-

ling “whose story” each sentence is. Note

“whose story” he makes each of his first

paragraph’s five sentences. I remind you

that a sentence in English is the story of

who or whatever shows up as the gram-

matical subject. Here are the grammatical

subjects for each of these five sentences:

(1) “There” is a word that just waves at

the wind, referring to no one nor no thing;

(2) “A statement”; (3) “Little that is new”;

(4) “The progress of our arms”—no people

here, just arms; and (5) “No prediction.”

No “I”; no “we”; no “us.” Just the facts,

disembodied. This is the story, not our

story. A self-important president would

have done just the opposite.

What kind of music did he summon

to accomplish his rhetorical aim here?

He needed something balanced, calm,

and predictable, without being boring or

wooden. Look at the colometric for the

last two sentences of this opening para-

graph: (For those new to my colometrics,

just read each spaced unit on a horizontal

line with one prose “beat.” Note how many

beats each line has compared with its

neighbors, and the balances will appear.)

The quiet 2 beats of the first line are

expanded to 4 beats in the second line

that can be neatly balanced internally

into half-lines, thus retaining the sense

of “two,” even though the unit of thought

has expanded to 4 beats. Keeping con-

trol, he gives us a third line that repeats

the rhythmic structure of its predecessor,

with the two “as... to” mileposts pointing

out again an internal 2+2 balance. Time to

repeat the 2-beat line as line 4; and round

LINCOLN’S SECOND

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

The progress of our arms,

upon which all else chiefly depends,

is as well known to the public as to myse lf,

and it is, I trust,

reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all.

With high hope for the future,

no prediction in regard to it is ven tured.

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