TOW #11

In his second inaugural address on March 4^th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln employed the appeal to logos in order to strengthen his argument that though there was a lot to celebrate in America, there was even more to work on in order to create a better nation. Lincoln’s speech was very positive because he was glad to have been elected president again although it had and underlying tone that gave the speech an unhappier mood. Lincoln discussed how there were many things which the nation had to improve on before there could be cause for celebration. As an example of something that the country need to change, Lincoln stated, “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.” (Lincoln). In this quote, the president employed an appeal to logos in his specific fact about how many people in America were slaves prior to the Civil War. The shocking reality of 1/8^th of the country being slaves was an appeal to logic, or logos. Lincoln included this appeal to surprise the listener and convince them that slavery was a real problem that they were lucky to have changed, but also that there are still other issues which need to be addressed and fixed by the citizens. By appealing to logos in this way and by sharing a shocking statistic about the nation’s past in order to show how much work is still left to be done in the future, Lincoln further achieved his purpose which was to convince the listeners that the nation should be proud of where it has come from but also not neglect the progress it has yet to make. I believe that through this use of rhetoric amongst others throughout the piece, Lincoln proved the argument he was trying to make.