Lincoln's Inaugural Address Rhetorical Analysis

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, provided a pivotal and solemn warning to the crumbling nation in his Inaugural Address—preceding the Civil War by a mere month and eight days: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”1 In Lincoln’s opinion, a finality in secession would provide an end to the country, and he was willing to use force and extreme measures to see its continuance. Unilateral tactics were utilized in which the liberties and rights granted by the Constitution faced infringement for the eventual betterment of society, through Lincoln’s measures focused on necessitating …show more content…
However, there is still debate as to whether Lincoln’s actions were constitutional or merely justifiable. Many studies on the topic of Lincoln’s executive power during the Civil War are compiled into a larger theory focusing on the “proper relation between constitutionalism and prerogative,”20 implying that the greater good can, at times, serve as a motivator to potentially infringe and impugn upon constitutional rights. Lincoln fully grasps the immense power of the executive and understands that this extraordinary power should not be exploited, “regularized, institutionalized, or legalized,”21 but used in blanket moderation. While unsympathetic criticisms claim that Lincoln is a democratic despot favoring tyranny, a more rational criticism is that he was a “constitutional dictator”—a man “pressed by necessity into becoming a dictator, though a benevolent [one]” serving the common good and