Dimensions of Temporality in Lincoin's Second inaugurai

• Man\' of Lincoln's best remembered oratit)n,s, including the House Divided Speech, the Cooper Union Address, and the Gettysburg Address, exhibit a elear pattern of temporal organization. The introductory remarks establish an orientation divided into past, p')rc.scnt, and future, and then the three tenses reappear in the body of the speech, each marking out one of its major divisions. Close reading demonstrates that this progression is more than a de\ice for separating the gross structural units of these discourses. Temporal movement, in fact, seems essential to their rhetorical economy; it frames the action of the \ arious argumentatix e and st\iistic elements, blends them into a unified field of textual action, and projects this field onto the public events that form the subject of the discourse (Leff and Mohrmann, 19'̂ 4, Leff, 1983, Thurow, l^ro, pp. "̂ o-HCx Warnick, 19S^, pp. 23(>239). Nowhere is this pattern more e\ ident or developed with greater skill than in the Second Inaugural, ^'et. the temporal inflections that guide the text are not generally acknowledged in the existing critical literature. The reason, 1 belie\e. is that, despite its status as a masterpiece of eloquence, the speech has not often been studied as an artistic whole. Instead the critical focus has centered either on the historical context or on isolated sections that illustrate Lincoln s character or his excellence as a stylist. Two recent studies attempt to remed\ this defect. In a master's thesis de\()ted entireh' to the text, Am\Slagell (198(i) presents a careful and expert analysis of its rhetorical structure. And in his book, Abraham Lincoht cifid American Political Religion, Glen E. Thurow (19^6) explicates Lincoln's political philosophy through a systematic reading of a number (̂ f his orations, including the Second Inaugural (pp. 8H-108). Both studies demonstrate that the arrangement of temporal units directs the symbolic m()\ ement of the text and that no adequate interpretation can disregard this chronological pattern. M\own anal\ sis relies heavily on these earlier works, but I wish to extend and complicate their findings in two respects: first, I will argue that the speech builds to a creative equivocation in the middle of the third paragraph, an equivocation that blends the historical present into a conception of a sacred present; second, I hope to show that this conflation is central to the form of the speech and serves as the \ehicle for sustaining its major themes. To establish these claims, I must re\iew the text in the order of its presentation.