Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)
He borrowed the idea partly from Daniel Webster.
It is, Sir, the people’s Constitution, the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.
Webster, Reply to Hayne (1830)
Lincoln was a master of epistrophe. Here he uses it in five or six different ways to make his consistency a rhetorical as well as a substantive fact:
If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
Lincoln, letter to Horace Greeley (1862)
Lincoln also made frequent use of a particular kind of epistrophe in which he repeated a word or phrase at the end of both halves of a sentence with little space between them.
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave.
Lincoln, letter to H.L. Pierce (1859)
I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power.
Lincoln, letter to A.G. Hodges (1864)
[T]he thing which determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended upon it, and so would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended upon it.
Lincoln, speech at Springfield (1858)
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)
Here as elsewhere, Lincoln’s ear was influenced by the King James Bible.
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6:15
And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together.
Genesis 13:6
4. Repetition at the Start and End: SYMPLOCE
SYMPLOCE (most often pronounced sim-plo-see, though respectable sources don’t always agree, and the more sensible pronunciation as a matter of etymology is sim-plo-kee) combines anaphora and epistrophe: words are repeated at the start of successive sentences or clauses, and other words are repeated at the end of them, often with just a small change in the middle. The nearly complete repetition lends itself to elegant effects. It also locks the speaker into a small number of possible patterns, so our treatment of them can be brief.
1. Corrections; reversals of direction. Symploce is useful for highlighting the contrast between correct and incorrect claims. The speaker changes the word choice in the smallest way that will suffice to separate the two possibilities; the result is conspicuous contrast between the small tweak in wording and the large change in substance. Some simple cases of correction, in which the symploce serves to emphasize a surprising change in direction:
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.
Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
I am not afraid of you; – but I am afraid for you.
Trollope, The Prime Minister (1876)
The order may as easily be reversed: the correct statement followed by the incorrect one, which is negated:
We are fighting by ourselves alone; but we are not fighting for ourselves alone.
Churchill, London radio broadcast (1940)
This construction also can emphasize the opposite nature of two claims, as here:
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
By keeping the statements parallel and nearly identical – the same nouns and verbs in the same order, with a change only in the words that relate them to each other – Chesterton causes the rhetoric to reflect the perfect reversal of understanding he means to suggest in substance.
[T]he right honourable gentleman has in a very ingenious manner twined and twisted the paragraph in question, to make it appear to be a libel; and I hope that I may be allowed to try if I cannot twine and twist it till it appears not to be a libel.
Flood, speech in the House of Commons (circa 1764)
2. Parallel elaboration. Symploce can be used to make a second statement elaborate on the first. The speaker offers two claims, using the same vocabulary and structure for each; a minor variation in the middle makes them distinct, but rhetorically as well as conceptually parallel.
Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be.
Paine, The American Crisis (1783)
For he who does not love art in all things does not love it at all, and he who does not need art in all things does not need it at all.
Wilde, The English Renaissance of Art (1882)
He spoke with consummate ability to the bench, and yet exactly as, according to every sound canon of taste and ethics, the bench ought to be addressed. He spoke with consummate ability to the jury, and yet exactly as, according to every sound canon, that totally different tribunal ought to be addressed.
Choate, eulogy for Daniel Webster (1853)
This form of the device is often used to express continuity despite a change in tense.
“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!”
Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
I here challenge any person in his five wits to tell me what that woman was sent to prison for. Either it was for being poor, or it was for being ill. Nobody could suggest, nobody will suggest, nobody, as a matter of fact, did suggest, that she had committed any other crime.
Chesterton, The Mad Official (1912)
3. Extended uses. Most of the examples so far have involved two claims with minor variations in the middle of them. More extended patterns also are possible, usually involving three or four parts. The typical idea then isn’t to ring in a correction or twist on the first statement; it is to present a series of claims in a way that throws their commonality or connection into relief.
a. Changes of a noun; as when describing several things as similar or as meeting the same fate.
In that room he found three gentlemen; number one doing nothing particular, number two doing nothing particular, number three doing nothing particular.
Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)
Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new. All their