Blog #8

After reading, I felt as though Jefferson Davis’ Inaugural Address and President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address were speaking to each other.  It seems as though President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address was a response to Jefferson Davis’ Inaugural Address, but he was not agreeing with Davis, but voicing ideas and opinions that were opposite of what Davis has said in his Address a few years earlier.

 In Davis’ Address he talks a lot about the rights that citizens were given in the Declaration of Independence and how the Union states were trying to take away those rights and end the original purpose for which the southern states were created.  Throughout his whole address it seems as though he is blaming the succession of the Southern states on the Union, by saying “We are doubly justified by the absence of wrong on our part, and by a wanton aggression on the parts of others (1360)”, Jefferson is putting confidence in southerners that there is nothing wrong with their way of life and that all the succeeding and revolting is a result of the northerners actions.  I think this speech is appealing to the southerners because Davis himself is a southern and he is defending the culture of the south.  He is defending slavery without actually saying anything about the topic but by talking about the “agricultural pursuits” of the south and that their “…policy is peace (1361)”.

In President Lincolns Address, he talks about the Civil War and the actions of the South that caused the Civil War to begin.  Lincoln states that “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 it perish (1374)”. Without directly saying the north or the south, Lincoln’s readers or listeners understand that south is the cause of the war in his eyes.  He also says that “It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces (1375)”, with this statement he is calling out the Southerners on greatly benefiting from the slaves hard work while they sit around and do nothing.  This speech probably enraged Northerners more than they already were because they worked hard for what they earned and believed that slavery was wrong and inhumane.  Lincoln’s audience probably agreed with him blaming the act of war on the South and that the South was responsible for the devastation of the Civil War.

I think that both Davis and Lincoln were persuasive and did a good job of persuading their audience in their way of thinking because they both wrote in a way that was appealing to their audiences.  I think that Lincoln may have been more persuasive to an audience that extended into the south because there were some Southerners that felt that slavery was wrong and that it was against the will of God.