Lincoln's First Inaugural

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With any speech no matter the subject being addressed, the speech its self can be greatly affected by the conditions in witch it is conducted. Whether it is the time period, the surroundings, or the type of audience being addressed each speech must accommodate these factors. This importance is greatly magnified the larger the audience base you are working with. Quite possibly the toughest platform being that of the President of the United States where your every word is analyzed and criticized. Though to become the President in the first place one would have to be an effective communicator, some are better than others are. One of the most effective in our history was that of Abraham Lincoln.
In Lincoln's first Inaugural Address we see start to see the great communicator he is and of his ability to speak accordingly to the situation at hand. In this particular situation Lincoln was coming into the Presidency at a time when the Nation was divided in two. Because of this He had to find a way in witch to appeal to both sides of the line, in this case it being that of the North and of the South. The major issue of the time was whether or not slavery was right or wrong, and whether or not it was the duty of a "free" state to return a runaway slave to their owner if found. With the Nation split as it was and on the verge of a Civil War Lincoln had to find a way in this first address to bring a sense of peace into everyone's mind about his being elected, while also trying to move towards National peace. He was very effective in this now very famous speech in doing just that. In this paper I will be analyzing a couple of the techniques He used to do so.
First, He had to let the public know that he would only be concerned with one issue on that day while not giving the illusion that he didn't care about the other problems in the Nation. He did this by stating his intentions right off the bat. He started by saying, "I do not consider...