Gettysburg Address
1. The theme of this address was to honor those who have lost their lives in the war. Lincoln also talks about how it is the duty of the living man to carry on the dead man’s work. There’s nothing more for them to do, there’s nothing more they can do, so it is up to those still breathing to honor their sacrifice, and preserve this consecrated, or holy, land in Gettysburg. It’s essentially about honor and continuation of the fight for freedom.
2. “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
Second Inaugural
1. This Inaugural Address, being Lincoln’s second, is much more war oriented. He also talks about God and religion a lot in it. With this address, Lincoln has no need to appeal to masses anymore, and can instead speak his true feelings on the inevitable war that is quickly coming to an end at the time this was written. He has a deep undertone about saving the Union, which is, and always has been, his ultimate goal. “Both parties depreciated 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” he says, meaning that neither side wanted war, but both sides had varying opinions. The South was the aggressor, thus making war rather than letting the Union survive, and the North would have to accept the war, in order to conserve the country. He will only continue the war if it is what God wants, if it is what the Union needs, with malice towards none, he shall accept the South back into the Union with open arms if they’re to wish to return. If they are to pray to the same God, then they are the same; man.
2. “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 nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which...