gettysburg address essay

A Summary and Analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Here’s a question for you. Who was the main speaker at the event which became known as the Gettysburg Address? If you answered ‘Abraham Lincoln’, this post is for you. For the facts of what took place on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated Confederate forces in the Battle of Gettysburg, have become shrouded in myth. And one of the most famous speeches in all of American history was not exactly a resounding success when it was first spoken.

What was the Gettysburg Address?

The Gettysburg Address is the name given to a short speech (of just 268 words) that the US President Abraham Lincoln delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery (which is now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery) in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on 19 November 1863. At the time, the American Civil War was still raging, and the Battle of Gettysburg had been the bloodiest battle in the war, with an estimated 23,000 casualties.

Gettysburg Address: summary

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

The opening words to the Gettysburg Address are now well-known. President Abraham Lincoln begins by harking back ‘four score and seven years’ – that is, eighty-seven years – to the year 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed and the nation known as the United States was founded.

The Declaration of Independence opens with the words: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’. Lincoln refers to these words in the opening sentence of his declaration.

However, when he uses the words, he is including all Americans – male and female (he uses ‘men’ here, but ‘man’, as the old quip has it, embraces ‘woman’) – including African slaves, whose liberty is at issue in the war. The Union side wanted to abolish slavery and free the slaves, whereas the Confederates, largely in the south of the US, wanted to retain slavery.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Lincoln immediately moves to throw emphasis on the sacrifice made by all of the fallen soldiers who gave their lives at Gettysburg, and at other battles during the Civil War. He reminds his listeners that the United States is still a relatively young country, not even a century old yet.

Will it endure when it is already at war with itself? Can all Americans be convinced that every single one of them, including its current slaves, deserves what the Declaration of Independence calls ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’?

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Lincoln begins the third and final paragraph of the Gettysburg Address with a slight rhetorical flourish: the so-called rule of three, which entails listing three things in succession. Here, he uses three verbs which are roughly synonymous with each other – ‘dedicate’, ‘consecrate’, ‘hallow’ – in order to drive home the sacrifice the dead soldiers have made. It is not for Lincoln and the survivors to declare this ground hallowed: the soldiers who bled for their cause have done that through the highest sacrifice it is possible to make.

Note that this is the fourth time Lincoln has used the verb ‘dedicate’ in this short speech: ‘and dedicated to the proposition …’; ‘any nation so conceived and so dedicated …’; ‘We have come to dedicate a portion …’; ‘we can not dedicate …’. He will go on to repeat the word twice more before the end of his address.

Repetition is another key rhetorical device used in persuasive writing, and Lincoln’s speech uses a great deal of repetition like this.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln concludes his address by urging his listeners to keep up the fight, so that the men who have died in battles such as the Battle of Gettysburg will not have given their lives in vain to a lost cause. He ends with a now-famous phrase (‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’) which evokes the principle of democracy , whereby nations are governed by elected officials and everyone has a say in who runs the country.

Gettysburg Address: analysis

The mythical aura surrounding the Gettysburg Address, like many iconic moments in American history, tends to obscure some of the more surprising facts from us. For example, on the day Lincoln delivered his famous address, he was not the top billing: the main speaker at Gettysburg on 19 November 1863 was not Abraham Lincoln but Edward Everett .

Everett gave a long – many would say overlong – speech, which lasted two hours . Everett’s speech was packed full of literary and historical allusions which were, one feels, there to remind his listeners how learned Everett was. When he’d finished, his exhausted audience of some 15,000 people waited for their President to address them.

Lincoln’s speech is just 268 words long, because he was intended just to wrap things up with a few concluding remarks. His speech lasted perhaps two minutes, contrasted with Everett’s two hours.

Afterwards, Lincoln remarked that he had ‘failed’ in his duty to deliver a memorable speech, and some contemporary newspaper reports echoed this judgment, with the Chicago Times summarising it as a few ‘silly, flat and dishwatery utterances’ before hinting that Lincoln’s speech was an embarrassment, especially coming from so high an office as the President of the United States.

But in time, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would come to be regarded as one of the great historic American speeches. This is partly because Lincoln eschewed the high-flown allusions and wordy style of most political orators of the nineteenth century.

Instead, he wanted to address people directly and simply, in plain language that would be immediately accessible and comprehensible to everyone. There is something democratic , in the broadest sense, about Lincoln’s choice of plain-spoken words and to-the-point sentences. He wanted everyone, regardless of their education or intellect, to be able to understand his words.

In writing and delivering a speech using such matter-of-fact language, Lincoln was being authentic and true to his roots. He may have been attempting to remind his listeners that he belonged to the frontier rather than to the East, the world of Washington and New York and Massachusetts.

There are several written versions of the Gettysburg Address in existence. However, the one which is viewed as the most authentic, and the most frequently reproduced, is the one known as the Bliss Copy . It is this version which is found on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It is named after Colonel Alexander Bliss, the stepson of historian George Bancroft.

Bancroft asked Lincoln for a copy to use as a fundraiser for soldiers, but because Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, the speech was illegible and could not be reprinted, so Lincoln made another copy at Bliss’s request. This is the last known copy of the speech which Lincoln himself wrote out, and the only one signed and dated by him, so this is why it is widely regarded as the most authentic.

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The Gettysburg Address

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 20, 2023 | Original: August 24, 2010

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered remarks, which later became known as the Gettysburg Address, at the official dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War. Though he was not the featured orator that day, Lincoln’s brief address would be remembered as one of the most important speeches in American history. In it, he invoked the principles of human equality contained in the Declaration of Independence and connected the sacrifices of the Civil War with the desire for “a new birth of freedom,” as well as the all-important preservation of the Union created in 1776 and its ideal of self-government.

Burying the Dead at Gettysburg

From July 1 to July 3, 1863, the invading forces of General Robert E. Lee ’s Confederate Army clashed with the Army of the Potomac (under its newly appointed leader, General George G. Meade ) in Gettysburg, some 35 miles southwest of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania . Casualties were high on both sides: Out of roughly 170,000 Union and Confederate soldiers, there were 23,000 Union casualties (more than one-quarter of the army’s effective forces) and 28,000 Confederates killed, wounded or missing (more than a third of Lee’s army) in the Battle of Gettysburg . After three days of battle, Lee retreated towards Virginia on the night of July 4. It was a crushing defeat for the Confederacy, and a month later the great general would offer Confederate President Jefferson Davis his resignation; Davis refused to accept it.

Did you know? Edward Everett, the featured speaker at the dedication ceremony of the National Cemetery of Gettysburg, later wrote to Lincoln, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

As after previous battles, thousands of Union soldiers killed at Gettysburg were quickly buried, many in poorly marked graves. In the months that followed, however, local attorney David Wills spearheaded efforts to create a national cemetery at Gettysburg. Wills and the Gettysburg Cemetery Commission originally set October 23 as the date for the cemetery’s dedication, but delayed it to mid-November after their choice for speaker, Edward Everett, said he needed more time to prepare. Everett, the former president of Harvard College, former U.S. senator and former secretary of state, was at the time one of the country’s leading orators. On November 2, just weeks before the event, Wills extended an invitation to President Lincoln, asking him “formally [to] set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”

Gettysburg Address: Lincoln’s Preparation

Though Lincoln was extremely frustrated with Meade and the Army of the Potomac for failing to pursue Lee’s forces in their retreat, he was cautiously optimistic as the year 1863 drew to a close. He also considered it significant that the Union victories at Gettysburg and at Vicksburg, under General Ulysses S. Grant , had both occurred on the same day: July 4, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence .

When he received the invitation to make the remarks at Gettysburg, Lincoln saw an opportunity to make a broad statement to the American people on the enormous significance of the war, and he prepared carefully. Though long-running popular legend holds that he wrote the speech on the train while traveling to Pennsylvania, he probably wrote about half of it before leaving the White House on November 18, and completed writing and revising it that night, after talking with Secretary of State William H. Seward , who had accompanied him to Gettysburg.

The Historic Gettysburg Address

On the morning of November 19, Everett delivered his two-hour oration (from memory) on the Battle of Gettysburg and its significance, and the orchestra played a hymn composed for the occasion by B.B. French. Lincoln then rose to the podium and addressed the crowd of some 15,000 people. He spoke for less than two minutes, and the entire speech was fewer than 275 words long. Beginning by invoking the image of the founding fathers and the new nation, Lincoln eloquently expressed his conviction that the Civil War was the ultimate test of whether the Union created in 1776 would survive, or whether it would “perish from the earth.” The dead at Gettysburg had laid down their lives for this noble cause, he said, and it was up to the living to confront the “great task” before them: ensuring that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The essential themes and even some of the language of the Gettysburg Address were not new; Lincoln himself, in his July 1861 message to Congress, had referred to the United States as “a democracy–a government of the people, by the same people.” The radical aspect of the speech, however, began with Lincoln’s assertion that the Declaration of Independence–and not the Constitution–was the true expression of the founding fathers’ intentions for their new nation. At that time, many white slave owners had declared themselves to be “true” Americans, pointing to the fact that the Constitution did not prohibit slavery; according to Lincoln, the nation formed in 1776 was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In an interpretation that was radical at the time–but is now taken for granted–Lincoln’s historic address redefined the Civil War as a struggle not just for the Union, but also for the principle of human equality.

Gettysburg Address Text

The full text of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is as follows:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Gettysburg Address: Public Reaction & Legacy

On the day following the dedication ceremony, newspapers all over the country reprinted Lincoln’s speech along with Everett’s. Opinion was generally divided along political lines, with Republican journalists praising the speech as a heartfelt, classic piece of oratory and Democratic ones deriding it as inadequate and inappropriate for the momentous occasion.

In the years to come, the Gettysburg Address would endure as arguably the most-quoted, most-memorized piece of oratory in American history. After Lincolns’ assassination in April 1865, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts wrote of the address, “That speech, uttered at the field of Gettysburg…and now sanctified by the martyrdom of its author, is a monumental act. In the modesty of his nature he said ‘the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.’ He was mistaken. The world at once noted what he said, and will never cease to remember it.”

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The Gettysburg Address

Abraham lincoln, everything you need for every book you read..

Lincoln’s The Gettysburg Address Analysis Essay

Introduction.

The Gettysburg Address is the most famous and one of the most quoted speeches of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, dedicated to the martyrs who had lost their lives during the American Civil War.

The speech was delivered at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the 19th of November, 1863; four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg.

The idea Lincoln is trying to convey to the audience is that they must devote themselves to the protection of a united nation and the new birth of freedom by honoring the dead so that their sacrifice would not be vain. Lincoln’s speech is set up chronologically and commences rather remarkably and extraordinarily, “Four score and seven years ago”, when the nation was formerly created, advancing to the civil war that nation was then engaged in, and finally focusing on the accomplishments from the war.

Lincoln knew that he was addressing a rather divided audience and thus reflected on the ideals and accomplishments of their forefathers which they all shared in common, reminding each section of their unified history thereby bridging the gap between North and South.

Lincoln tactically ignored the reference to slavery or any other comment that would put him in support of either segment. The purpose was to bring the divided people together, so that they would envision a solitary objective of preservation and in effect, rebirth. Lincoln also exposes the problems of “a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure” and its solution by emphasizing their duty to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work of preserving their nation.

Language and structure played an effective role in Lincoln’s speech through the utilization of words that lent a sense of unity and strength such as “our”, “we”, “us”, “nation”, and “the people”. The speech mostly comprised of simple, mono-syllabic or bi-syllabic words as Lincoln knew very well that he was speaking to a diverse crowd comprising not only of politicians, military officers and press, but most importantly the families of the martyred who were commoners and were obviously the most significant section of the audience.

Lincoln gave a stirring speech by bringing into play, antitheses and juxtaposition of ideas: mortal and immortal, “that nation might live … shall not perish from the earth” and “the world will little note, nor long remember” contrasting to “it can never forget”. Lincoln also appeals to the emotions of the audience by the means of words such as ‘fathers’, ‘liberty’, ‘war’, ‘died’, ‘dedicate’, ‘consecrate’, ‘struggle’, ‘nobly’, ‘honored’, ‘God’ and ‘freedom’. Within two minutes Lincoln was able to offer to them self-importance, assurance, rationale, optimism and a united goal by appealing to them to come together as one nation, with a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.

The Gettysburg Address is an excellent appeal to humanity to preserve democracy, liberty, and justice for all time, “a new birth of freedom”.

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The Words That Remade America

The significance of the Gettysburg Address

In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee pushed northward into Pennsylvania. The Union army met him at Gettysburg, and from July 1 to July 3, the bloodiest battle of the war ensued. By the time it was over, the Confederates were in retreat, and the battlefield was strewn with more than 50,000 dead and wounded. Four months later, thousands gathered at Gettysburg to witness the dedication of a new cemetery. On the program was the standard assortment of music, remarks, and prayers. But what transpired that day was more extraordinary than anyone could have anticipated. In “The Words That Remade America,” the historian and journalist Garry Wills reconstructed the events leading up to the occasion, debunking the myth that President Lincoln wrote his remarks at the last minute, and carefully unpacking Lincoln’s language to show how—in just 272 words—he subtly cast the nation’s understanding of the Constitution in new, egalitarian terms. Wills’s book Lincoln at Gettysburg , from which the essay was adapted, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. —Sage Stossel

I N THE AFTERMATH of the Battle of Gettysburg, both sides, leaving fifty thousand dead or wounded or missing behind them, had reason to maintain a large pattern of pretense—Lee pretending that he was not taking back to the South a broken cause, Meade that he would not let the broken pieces fall through his fingers. It would have been hard to predict that Gettysburg, out of all this muddle, these missed chances, all the senseless deaths, would become a symbol of national purpose, pride, and ideals. Abraham Lincoln transformed the ugly reality into something rich and strange—and he did it with 272 words. The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration.

The residents of Gettysburg had little reason to be satisfied with the war machine that had churned up their lives. General George Gordon Meade may have pursued General Robert E. Lee in slow motion, but he wired headquarters that “I cannot delay to pick up the debris of the battlefield.” That debris was mainly a matter of rotting horseflesh and manflesh—thousands of fermenting bodies, with gas-distended bellies, deliquescing in the July heat. For hygienic reasons, the five thousand horses and mules had to be consumed by fire, trading the smell of decaying flesh for that of burning flesh. Human bodies were scattered over, or (barely) under, the ground. Suffocating teams of Union soldiers, Confederate prisoners, and dragooned civilians slid the bodies beneath a minimal covering as fast as possible—crudely posting the names of the Union dead with sketchy information on boards, not stopping to figure out what units the Confederate bodies had belonged to. It was work to be done hugger-mugger or not at all, fighting clustered bluebottle flies black on the earth, shoveling and retching by turns.

The whole area of Gettysburg—a town of only twenty-five hundred inhabitants—was one makeshift burial ground, fetid and steaming. Andrew Curtin, the Republican governor of Pennsylvania, was facing a difficult reelection campaign. He must placate local feeling, deal with other states diplomatically, and raise the funds to cope with corpses that could go on killing by means of fouled streams or contaminating exhumations.

Curtin made the thirty-two-year-old David Wills, a Gettysburg lawyer, his agent on the scene. Wills (who is no relation to the author) … meant to dedicate the ground that would hold the corpses even before they were moved. He felt the need for artful words to sweeten the poisoned air of Gettysburg. He asked the principal wordsmiths of his time to join this effort—Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant. All three poets, each for his own reason, found their muse unbiddable. But Wills was not terribly disappointed. The normal purgative for such occasions was a large-scale, solemn act of oratory, a kind of performance art that had great power over audiences in the middle of the nineteenth century. Some later accounts would emphasize the length of the main speech at the Gettysburg dedication, as if that were an ordeal or an imposition on the audience. But a talk of several hours was customary and expected then—much like the length and pacing of a modern rock concert. The crowds that heard Lincoln debate Stephen Douglas in 1858, through three-hour engagements, were delighted to hear Daniel Webster and other orators of the day recite carefully composed paragraphs for two hours at the least.

The champion at such declamatory occasions, after the death of Daniel Webster, was Webster’s friend Edward Everett. Everett was that rare thing, a scholar and an Ivy League diplomat who could hold mass audiences in thrall. His voice, diction, and gestures were successfully dramatic, and he habitually performed his well-crafted text, no matter how long, from memory. Everett was the inevitable choice for Wills, the indispensable component in the scheme for the cemetery’s consecration. Battlefields were something of a specialty with Everett—he had augmented the fame of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill by his oratory at those Revolutionary sites. Simply to have him speak at Gettysburg would add this field to the sacred roll of names from the Founders’ battles.

Everett was invited, on September 23, to appear October 23. That would leave all of November for filling the graves. But a month was not sufficient time for Everett to make his customary preparation for a major speech. He did careful research on the battles he was commemorating—a task made difficult in this case by the fact that official accounts of the engagement were just appearing. Everett would have to make his own inquiries. He could not be ready before November 19. Wills seized on that earliest moment, though it broke with the reburial schedule that had been laid out to follow on the October dedication. He decided to move up the reburial, beginning it in October and hoping to finish by November 19.

The careful negotiations with Everett form a contrast, more surprising to us than to contemporaries, with the casual invitation to President Lincoln, issued some time later as part of a general call for the federal Cabinet and other celebrities to join in what was essentially a ceremony of the participating states.

No insult was intended. Federal responsibility for or participation in state activities was not assumed then. And Lincoln took no offense. Though specifically invited to deliver only “a few appropriate remarks” to open the cemetery, he meant to use this opportunity. The partly mythical victory of Gettysburg was an element of his Administration’s war propaganda. (There were, even then, few enough victories to boast of.) Beyond that, he was working to unite the rival Republican factions of Governor Curtin and Simon Cameron, Edwin Stanton’s predecessor as Secretary of War. He knew that most of the state governors would be attending or sending important aides—his own bodyguard, Ward Lamon, who was acting as chief marshal organizing the affair, would have alerted him to the scale the event had assumed, with a tremendous crowd expected. This was a classic situation for political fence-mending and intelligence-gathering. Lincoln would take with him aides who would circulate and bring back their findings. Lamon himself had a cluster of friends in Pennsylvania politics, including some close to Curtin, who had been infuriated when Lincoln overrode his opposition to Cameron’s Cabinet appointment.

Lincoln also knew the power of his rhetoric to define war aims. He was seeking occasions to use his words outside the normal round of proclamations and reports to Congress. His determination not only to be present but to speak is seen in the way he overrode staff scheduling for the trip to Gettysburg. Stanton had arranged for a 6:00 A.M. train to take him the hundred and twenty rail miles to the noontime affair. But Lincoln was familiar enough by now with military movement to appreciate what Clausewitz called “friction” in the disposal of forces—the margin for error that must always be built into planning. Lamon would have informed Lincoln about the potential for muddle on the nineteenth. State delegations, civic organizations, military bands and units, were planning to come by train and road, bringing at least ten thousand people to a town with poor resources for feeding and sheltering crowds (especially if the weather turned bad). So Lincoln countermanded Stanton’s plan:

I do not like this arrangement. I do not wish to so go that by the slightest accident we fail entirely, and, at the best, the whole to be a mere breathless running of the gauntlet …

If Lincoln had not changed the schedule, he would very likely not have given his talk. Even on the day before, his trip to Gettysburg took six hours, with transfers in Baltimore and at Hanover Junction … [He] kept his resolution to leave a day early even when he realized that his wife was hysterical over one son’s illness soon after the death of another son. The President had important business in Gettysburg.

For a man so determined to get there, Lincoln seems—in familiar accounts—to have been rather cavalier about preparing what he would say in Gettysburg. The silly but persistent myth is that he jotted his brief remarks on the back of an envelope. (Many details of the day are in fact still disputed, and no definitive account exists.) Better-attested reports have him considering them on the way to a photographer’s shop in Washington, writing them on a piece of cardboard as the train took him on the hundred-and-twenty-mile trip, penciling them in David Wills’s house on the night before the dedication, writing them in that house on the morning of the day he had to deliver them, and even composing them in his head as Everett spoke, before Lincoln rose to follow him.

These recollections, recorded at various times after the speech had been given and won fame, reflect two concerns on the part of those speaking them. They reveal an understandable pride in participation at the historic occasion. It was not enough for those who treasured their day at Gettysburg to have heard Lincoln speak—a privilege they shared with ten to twenty thousand other people, and an experience that lasted no more than three minutes. They wanted to be intimate with the gestation of that extraordinary speech, watching the pen or pencil move under the inspiration of the moment.

That is the other emphasis in these accounts—that it was a product of the moment, struck off as Lincoln moved under destiny’s guidance. Inspiration was shed on him in the presence of others. The contrast with Everett’s long labors of preparation is always implied. Research, learning, the student’s lamp—none of these were needed by Lincoln, whose unsummoned muse was prompting him, a democratic muse unacquainted with the library. Lightning struck, and each of our informants (or their sources) was there when it struck …

These mythical accounts are badly out of character for Lincoln, who composed his speeches thoughtfully. His law partner, William Herndon, having observed Lincoln’s careful preparation of cases, recorded that he was a slow writer, who liked to sort out his points and tighten his logic and his phrasing. That is the process vouched for in every other case of Lincoln’s memorable public statements. It is impossible to imagine him leaving his Gettysburg speech to the last moment. He knew he would be busy on the train and at the site—important political guests were with him from his departure, and more joined him at Baltimore, full of talk about the war, elections, and policy … He could not count on any time for the concentration he required when weighing his words …

Lincoln’s train arrived toward dusk in Gettysburg. There were still coffins stacked at the station for completing the reburials. Lamon, Wills, and Everett met Lincoln and escorted him the two blocks to the Wills home, where dinner was waiting, along with almost two dozen other distinguished guests. Lincoln’s black servant, William Slade, took his luggage to the second-story room where he would stay that night, which looked out on the square.

Everett was already in residence at the Wills house, and Governor Curtin’s late arrival led Wills to suggest that the two men share a bed. The governor thought he could find another house to receive him, though lodgings were so overcrowded that Everett said in his diary that “the fear of having the Executive of Pennsylvania tumbled in upon me kept me awake until one.” Everett’s daughter was sleeping with two other women, and the bed broke under their weight. William Saunders, the cemetery’s designer, who would have an honored place on the platform the next day, could find no bed and had to sleep sitting up in a crowded parlor …

Early in the morning Lincoln took a carriage ride to the battle sites. Later, Ward Lamon and his specially uniformed marshals assigned horses to the various dignitaries (carriages would have clogged the site too much). Although the march was less than a mile, Lamon had brought thirty horses into town, and Wills had supplied a hundred, to honor the officials present.

Lincoln sat his horse gracefully (to the surprise of some), and looked meditative during the long wait while marshals tried to coax into line important people more concerned about their dignity than the President was about his. Lincoln was wearing a mourning band on his hat for his dead son. He also wore white gauntlets, which made his large hands on the reins dramatic by contrast with his otherwise black attire.

Everett had gone out earlier, by carriage, to prepare himself in the special tent he had asked for near the platform. At sixty-nine, he had kidney trouble and needed to relieve himself just before and after the three-hour ceremony. (He had put his problem so delicately that his hosts did not realize that he meant to be left alone in the tent; but he finally coaxed them out.) Everett mounted the platform at the last moment, after most of the others had arrived.

Those on the raised platform were hemmed in close by standing crowds. When it had become clear that the numbers might approach twenty thousand, the platform had been set at some distance from the burial operations. Only a third of the expected bodies had been buried, and those under fresh mounds. Other graves had been readied for the bodies, which arrived in irregular order (some from this state, some from that), making it impossible to complete one section at a time. The whole burial site was incomplete. Marshals tried to keep the milling thousands out of the work in progress.

Everett, as usual, had neatly placed his thick text on a little table before him—and then ostentatiously refused to look at it. He was able to indicate with gestures the sites of the battle’s progress, visible from where he stood. He excoriated the rebels for their atrocities, implicitly justifying the fact that some Confederate skeletons were still unburied, lying in the clefts of Devil’s Den under rocks and autumn leaves. Two days earlier Everett had been shown around the field, and places were pointed out where the bodies lay. His speech, for good or ill, would pick its way through the carnage.

As a former Secretary of State, Everett had many sources, in and outside government, for the information he had gathered so diligently. Lincoln no doubt watched closely how the audience responded to passages that absolved Meade of blame for letting Lee escape. The setting of the battle in a larger logic of campaigns had an immediacy for those on the scene which we cannot recover. Everett’s familiarity with the details was flattering to the local audience, which nonetheless had things to learn from this shapely presentation of the whole three days’ action. This was like a modern “docudrama” on television, telling the story of recent events on the basis of investigative reporting. We badly misread the evidence if we think Everett failed to work his customary magic. The best witnesses on the scene—Lincoln’s personal secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, with their professional interest in good prose and good theater—praised Everett at the time and ever after. He received more attention in their biography’s chapter on Gettysburg than did their own boss.

When Lincoln rose, it was with a sheet or two, from which he read. Lincoln’s three minutes would ever after be obsessively contrasted with Everett’s two hours in accounts of this day. It is even claimed that Lincoln disconcerted the crowd with his abrupt performance, so that people did not know how to respond (“Was that all?”). Myth tells of a poor photographer making leisurely arrangements to take Lincoln’s picture, expecting him to be standing for some time. But it is useful to look at the relevant part of the program:

Music. by Birgfield’s Band . Prayer. by Rev. T.H. Stockton, D.D. Music. by the Marine Band. ORATION. by Hon. Edward Everett. Music. Hymn composed by B. B. French. DEDICATORY REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Dirge. sung by Choir selected for the occasion. Benediction. by Rev. H.L. Baugher, D.D.

There was only one “oration” announced or desired here. Though we call Lincoln’s text the Gettysburg Address, that title clearly belongs to Everett. Lincoln’s contribution, labeled “remarks,” was intended to make the dedication formal (somewhat like ribbon-cutting at modern openings). Lincoln was not expected to speak at length, any more than Rev. T. H. Stockton was (though Stockton’s prayer is four times the length of the President’s remarks). A contrast of length with Everett’s talk raises a false issue. Lincoln’s text is startlingly brief for what it accomplished, but that would be equally true if Everett had spoken for a shorter time or had not spoken at all.

Nonetheless, the contrast was strong. Everett’s voice was sweet and expertly modulated; Lincoln’s was high to the point of shrillness, and his Kentucky accent offended some eastern sensibilities. But Lincoln derived an advantage from his high tenor voice—carrying power. If there is agreement on any one aspect of Lincoln’s delivery, at Gettysburg or elsewhere, it is on his audibility. Modern impersonators of Lincoln, such as Walter Huston, Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda, and the various actors who give voice to Disneyland animations of the President, bring him before us as a baritone, which is considered a more manly or heroic voice—though both the Roosevelt Presidents of our century were tenors. What should not be forgotten is that Lincoln was himself an actor, an expert raconteur and mimic, and one who spent hours reading speeches out of Shakespeare to any willing (or sometimes unwilling) audience. He knew a good deal about rhythmic delivery and meaningful inflection. John Hay, who had submitted to many of those Shakespeare readings, gave high marks to his boss’s performance at Gettysburg. He put in his diary at the time that “the President, in a fine, free way, with more grace than is his wont, said his half dozen words of consecration.” Lincoln’s text was polished, his delivery emphatic; he was interrupted by applause five times. Read in a slow, clear way to the farthest listeners, the speech would take about three minutes. It is quite true the audience did not take in all that happened in that short time—we are still trying to weigh the consequences of Lincoln’s amazing performance. But the myth that Lincoln was disappointed in the result—that he told the unreliable Lamon that his speech, like a bad plow, “won’t scour”—has no basis. He had done what he wanted to do, and Hay shared the pride his superior took in an important occasion put to good use.

At the least, Lincoln had far surpassed David Wills’s hope for words to disinfect the air of Gettysburg. His speech hovers far above the carnage. He lifts the battle to a level of abstraction that purges it of grosser matter—even “earth” is mentioned only as the thing from which the tested form of government shall not perish. The nightmare realities have been etherealized in the crucible of his language.

Lincoln was here to clear the infected atmosphere of American history itself, tainted with official sins and inherited guilt. He would cleanse the Constitution—not as William Lloyd Garrison had, by burning an instrument that countenanced slavery. He altered the document from within, by appeal from its letter to the spirit, subtly changing the recalcitrant stuff of that legal compromise, bringing it to its own indictment. By implicitly doing this, he performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleight of hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his or her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, the new Constitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they had brought there with them. They walked off from those curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely …

Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg worked several revolutions, beginning with one in literary style. Everett’s talk was given at the last point in history when such a performance could be appreciated without reservation. It was made obsolete within a half hour of the time when it was spoken. Lincoln’s remarks anticipated the shift to vernacular rhythms which Mark Twain would complete twenty years later. Hemingway claimed that all modern American novels are the offspring of Huckleberry Finn . It is no greater exaggeration to say that all modern political prose descends from the Gettysburg Address …

The spare quality of Lincoln’s prose did not come naturally but was worked at. Lincoln not only read aloud, to think his way into sounds, but also wrote as a way of ordering his thought … He loved the study of grammar, which some think the most arid of subjects. Some claimed to remember his gift for spelling, a view that our manuscripts disprove. Spelling as he had to learn it (separate from etymology) is more arbitrary than logical. It was the logical side of language—the principles of order as these reflect patterns of thought or the external world—that appealed to him.

He was also, Herndon tells us, laboriously precise in his choice of words. He would have agreed with Mark Twain that the difference between the right word and the nearly right one is that between lightning and a lightning bug. He said, debating Douglas, that his foe confused a similarity of words with a similarity of things—as one might equate a horse chestnut with a chestnut horse.

As a speaker, Lincoln grasped Twain’s later insight: “Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.” The trick, of course, was not simply to be brief but to say a great deal in the fewest words. Lincoln justly boasted of his Second Inaugural’s seven hundred words, “Lots of wisdom in that document, I suspect.” The same is even truer of the Gettysburg Address, which uses fewer than half that number of words.

The unwillingness to waste words shows up in the address’s telegraphic quality—the omission of coupling words, a technique rhetoricians call asyndeton. Triple phrases sound as to a drumbeat, with no “and” or “but” to slow their insistency:

we are engaged … We are met … We have come … we can not dedicate … we can not consecrate … we can not hallow … that from these honored dead … that we here highly resolve … that this nation, under God … government of the people , by the people , for the people …

Despite the suggestive images of birth, testing, and rebirth, the speech is surprisingly bare of ornament. The language itself is made strenuous, its musculature easily traced, so that even the grammar becomes a form of rhetoric. By repeating the antecedent as often as possible, instead of referring to it indirectly by pronouns like “it” and “they,” or by backward referential words like “former” and “latter,” Lincoln interlocks his sentences, making of them a constantly self-referential system. This linking up by explicit repetition amounts to a kind of hook-and-eye method for joining the parts of his address. The rhetorical devices are almost invisible, since they use no figurative language. (I highlight them typographically here.)

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in A GREAT CIVIL WAR, testing whether that nation , or any nation so conceived and so dedicated , can long endure. We are met on a great BATTLE-FIELD of THAT WAR. We have come to dedicate a portion of THAT FIELD , as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate —we can not consecrate —we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here , have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from THESE HONORED DEAD we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion— that we here highly resolve that THESE DEAD shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Each of the paragraphs printed separately here is bound to the preceding and the following by some resumptive element. Only the first and last paragraphs do not (because they cannot) have this two-way connection to their setting. Not all of the “pointer” phrases replace grammatical antecedents in the technical sense. But Lincoln makes them perform analogous work. The nation is declared to be “dedicated” before the term is given further uses for individuals present at the ceremony, who repeat (as it were) the national consecration. The compactness of the themes is emphasized by this reliance on a few words in different contexts.

A similar linking process is performed, almost subliminally, by the repeated pinning of statements to this field, these dead, who died here , for that kind of nation. The reverential touching, over and over, of the charged moment and place leads Lincoln to use “here” eight times in the short text, the adjectival “that” five times, and “this” four times. The spare vocabulary is not impoverishing, because of the subtly interfused constructions, in which the classicist Charles Smiley identified “two antitheses, five cases of anaphora, eight instances of balanced phrases and clauses, thirteen alliterations.” “Plain speech” was never less artless. Lincoln forged a new lean language to humanize and redeem the first modern war.

This was the perfect medium for changing the way most Americans thought about the nation’s founding. Lincoln did not argue law or history, as Daniel Webster had. He made history. He came not to present a theory but to impose a symbol, one tested in experience and appealing to national values, expressing emotional urgency in calm abstractions. He came to change the world, to effect an intellectual revolution. No other words could have done it. The miracle is that these words did. In his brief time before the crowd at Gettysburg he wove a spell that has not yet been broken—he called up a new nation out of the blood and trauma.

[Lincoln] not only presented the Declaration of Independence in a new light, as a matter of founding law, but put its central proposition, equality, in a newly favored position as a principle of the Constitution … What had been mere theory in the writings of James Wilson, Joseph Story, and Daniel Webster—that the nation preceded the states, in time and importance—now became a lived reality of the American tradition. The results of this were seen almost at once. Up to the Civil War “the United States” was invariably a plural noun: “The United States are a free country.” After Gettysburg it became a singular: “The United States is a free country.” This was a result of the whole mode of thinking that Lincoln expressed in his acts as well as his words, making union not a mystical hope but a constitutional reality. When, at the end of the address, he referred to government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” he was not, like Theodore Parker, just praising popular government as a Transcendentalist’s ideal. Rather, like Webster, he was saying that America was a people accepting as its great assignment what was addressed in the Declaration. This people was “conceived” in 1776, was “brought forth” as an entity whose birth was datable (“four score and seven years” before) and placeable (“on this continent”), and was capable of receiving a “new birth of freedom.”

Thus Abraham Lincoln changed the way people thought about the Constitution …

The Gettysburg Address has become an authoritative expression of the American spirit—as authoritative as the Declaration itself, and perhaps even more influential, since it determines how we read the Declaration. For most people now, the Declaration means what Lincoln told us it means, as he did to correct the Constitution without overthrowing it … By accepting the Gettysburg Address, and its concept of a single people dedicated to a proposition, we have been changed. Because of it, we live in a different America.

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Presidential Speeches

November 19, 1863: gettysburg address, about this speech.

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

Four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln joined in a dedication of a national cemetery on a portion of the battlefield. The speech he delivered that day would become one of the most famous speeches given by a U.S. President.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Gettysburg Address

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Discussion Questions

Lincoln begins his address by referring to three things: a date in the past, “our fathers,” and “a new nation.” Who are these fathers, what nation does Lincoln refer to, and why is the date he mentions so meaningful?

What was the purpose of the ceremony at which Lincoln gave his address? Why is this context important?

How, according to Lincoln, does the “great civil war” test the founding ideals of the United States?

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The Gettysburg Address

By tim bailey, view the gettysburg address in the gilder lehrman collection by clicking here . for another resource on the gettysburg address click here ..

Unit Objective

This lesson on President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Students will demonstrate their knowledge by writing summaries of selections from the original document and, by the end of the unit, articulating their understanding of the complete document by answering questions in an argumentative writing style to fulfill the Common Core State Standards. Through this step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material.

Students will be asked to "read like a detective" and gain a clear understanding of the content of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address of 1863. Through reading and analyzing the original text, the students will know what is explicitly stated, draw logical inferences, and demonstrate these skills by writing a succinct summary and then restating that summary in the student’s own words. In the first lesson this will be facilitated by the teacher and done as a whole-class lesson.

Introduction

Tell the students that they will be learning what Abraham Lincoln was saying in the Gettysburg Address by reading and understanding Lincoln’s own words. Resist the temptation to put the speech into too much context. Remember, we are trying to let the students discover what Lincoln had to say and then develop ideas based solely on his words.

• The Gettysburg Address (PDF)
• Summary Organizer #1 (PDF)
• Overhead projector, ELMO, or other display method
• All students are given a copy of the Gettysburg Address and then are asked to read it silently to themselves.
• The teacher then "share reads" the address with the students. This is done by having the students follow along silently while the teacher begins reading aloud. The teacher models prosody, inflection, and punctuation. The teacher then asks the class to join in with the reading after a few sentences while the teacher continues to read along with the students, still serving as the model for the class. This technique will support struggling readers as well as English language learners (ELL).
• The teacher explains that the students will be analyzing the first part of the speech today and that they will be learning how to do in-depth analysis for themselves. All students are given a copy of Summary Organizer #1. This contains the first selection from the Gettysburg Address.
• The teacher puts a copy of Summary Organizer #1 on display in a format large enough for all of the class to see (an overhead projector, Elmo projector, or similar device) and explains that today the whole class will be going through this process together.
• The teacher explains that the objective is to select "Key Words" from the first section and then use those words to create a summary sentence that demonstrates an understanding of what Lincoln was saying in the first paragraph.
• Guidelines for selecting the Key Words: Key Words are very important contributors to understanding the text. They are usually nouns or verbs. Don’t pick "connector" words (are, is, the, and, so, etc.). The number of Key Words depends on the length of the original selection. This selection is only 30 words long so we can pick four or five Key Words. The other Key Words rule is that we cannot pick words if we don’t know what they mean. There will be opportunities to teach students how to use context clues, word analysis, and dictionary skills to discover word meanings.
• Students will now select four or five words from the text that they believe are Key Words and write them in the Key Words box in their organizers.
• The teacher surveys the class to find out what the most popular choices were. The teacher can either tally this or just survey by a show of hands. Using this vote and some discussion the class should, with guidance from the teacher, decide on four or five Key Words. For example, let’s say that the class decides on the following words: new nation (yes, these are two words, but you can allow such things if it makes sense to do so), liberty, men, and equal. Now, no matter which words the students had previously selected, have them write the words agreed upon by the class or chosen by you into the Key Words box in their organizers.
• The teacher now explains that, using these Key Words, the class will write a sentence that summarizes what Lincoln was saying. This should be a whole-class discussion-and-negotiation process. For example, "They created a new nation of liberty where all men are equal." You might find that the class decides they don’t need the some of the words to make it even more streamlined. This is part of the negotiation process. The final negotiated sentence is copied into the organizer in the third section under the original text and Key Words sections.
• The teacher explains that students will restate the summary sentence in their own words, not having to use Lincoln’s words. Again, this is a class discussion-and-negotiation process. For example, "They started a country where everyone would be free and treated the same."
• Wrap-up: Discuss vocabulary that the students found confusing or difficult. If the teacher chooses, the students could use the back of their organizers to make a note of these words and their meanings.

Students will be asked to "read like a detective" and gain a clear understanding of the content of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Through reading and analyzing the original text, the students will know what is explicitly stated, draw logical inferences, and demonstrate these skills by writing a succinct summary and then restating that summary in the student’s own words. In the second lesson the students will work with partners and in small groups.

Tell the students that they will be further exploring what President Lincoln was talking about in the second selection from the Gettysburg Address by reading and understanding Lincoln’s words and then being able to tell, in their own words, what he said. Today they will be working with partners and in small groups.

• Summary Organizer #2 (PDF)
• Overhead projector, Elmo projector, or similar device
• All students are given a copy of the address and then are asked to read it silently to themselves.
• The students and teacher discuss what they did yesterday and what they decided was the meaning of the first selection.
• The teacher then "share reads" the second selection with the students.
• The teacher explains that the class will be analyzing the second part of the Gettysburg Address today. All students are given a copy of Summary Organizer #2. This contains the second selection from the speech.
• The teacher puts a copy of Summary Organizer #2 on display in a format large enough for all of the class to see (an overhead projector, Elmo projector, or similar device). Explain that today they will be going through the same process as yesterday but as partners and small groups.
• The teacher explains that the objective is still to select "Key Words" from the second paragraph and then use those words to create a summary sentence that demonstrates an understanding of what Lincoln was talking about in that selection.
• The guidelines for selecting Key Words are the same as they were yesterday. However, because this paragraph is longer, they can pick six to eight words.
• Pair the students up and have them negotiate which Key Words to select. After they have decided on their words both students will write them in the Key Words box of their organizers.
• The teacher now puts two pairs together. These two pairs go through the same discussion-and-negotiation process to come up with their Key Words. Be strategic in how you make your groups to ensure the most participation by all group members.
• The teacher now explains that the group will use the Key Words to build a sentence that summarizes what Lincoln was talking about. This is done by the group negotiating with its members on how best to build that sentence. Try to make sure that everyone is contributing to the process. It is very easy for one student to take control and for the other students to let them do so. All of the students should write their negotiated sentence into their organizers.
• The teacher now asks for the groups to share out their summary sentences. This should start a teacher-led discussion that points out the qualities of the various attempts. How successful were the groups at understanding Lincoln’s text and were they careful to only use Lincoln’s Key Words in doing so?
• The teacher explains that the group will now restate the summary sentence in their own words, not having to use Lincoln’s words. Again, this is a group discussion-and-negotiation process. After they have decided on a sentence it should be written into their organizers.
• The teacher should have the groups share out and discuss the clarity and quality of the groups’ attempts.

Students will be asked to "read like a detective" and gain a clear understanding of the content of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Through reading and analyzing the original text, the students will know what is explicitly stated, draw logical inferences, and demonstrate these skills by writing a succinct summary and then restating that summary in the student’s own words. In this lesson the students will be working individually.

Tell the students that they will be further exploring what President Lincoln was talking about in the third section of the Gettysburg Address by reading and understanding Lincoln’s words and then being able to tell, in their own words, what he said. Today they will be working by themselves on their summaries.

• Summary Organizer #3 (PDF)
• The students and teacher discuss what they did yesterday and what they decided was the meaning of the first and second selections.
• The teacher then "share reads" the third selection with the students.
• The teacher explains that the class will be analyzing the third selection from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address today. All students are given a copy of Summary Organizer #3. This contains the third selection from the speech.
• The teacher puts a copy of Summary Organizer #3 on display in a format large enough for all of the class to see (an overhead projector, Elmo projector, or similar device)and explains that the students will be going through the same process as yesterday, but they will be working by themselves.
• The teacher explains that the objective is still to select "Key Words" from the third paragraph and then use those words to create a summary sentence that demonstrates an understanding of what Lincoln was talking about in that selection.
• The guidelines for selecting these words are the same as they were yesterday. However, because this paragraph is 166 words, they can pick up to ten Key Words.
• Have the students decide which Key Words to select. After they have chosen their words they will write them in the Key Words box of their organizers.
• The teacher now explains that, using these Key Words, the students will build a sentence that summarizes what Lincoln was saying. They should write their summary sentences into their organizers.
• The students will now restate the summary sentence in their own words, not having to use Lincoln’s words. This should be added to their organizers.

Lessons 4 and 5

This lesson has three objectives. First, the students will synthesize the work of the last three days and demonstrate that they understand what Lincoln was saying in the Gettysburg Address. Second, the students will analyze the writing craft of Abraham Lincoln by examining his use of the word "dedicate" in this document. Third, the teacher will ask questions of the students that require them to make inferences from the text and support their conclusions with explicit information from the text. They can write their answers in the form of a short argumentative essay either during this lesson, for homework, or during the next class period.

Tell the students that they will be reviewing what Abraham Lincoln was saying in the Gettysburg Address. Second, the students will be looking closely at how Lincoln carefully crafted this speech by his choice of words. Finally, you will be asking them to write a short argumentative essay about this speech; explain that their conclusions must be backed up by evidence taken directly from the text.

• The Gettysburg Address (highlighted) (PDF)
• All students are given a copy of the Gettysburg Address and are asked to read it silently to themselves.
• The teacher asks the students for their best personal summary of selection one. This is done as a negotiation or discussion. The teacher may write this short sentence on the overhead or similar device. The same procedure is used for selections two and three. When they are finished, the class should have a summary, either written or oral, of Lincoln’s address in only a few sentences. This should give the students a way to state the general purpose or purposes of the speech.
• The teacher then explains that Lincoln used one particular word six times in this short speech, and as the speech developed so did the meaning of the word. He used it once in the first paragraph, twice in the second paragraph, and three times in the third paragraph. Have the students try to figure out what the word is before you tell them that it is "dedicate."
• The teacher puts a highlighted copy of the Gettysburg Address on the overhead, but covers up the definitions at the bottom of the page for now. Ask the students to figure out how the meaning of the word changes from paragraph to paragraph. After this discussion reveal the definitions at the bottom of the page and match the definitions with the highlighted words.
• How does the use of the word "dedicate" change the meaning of the message in the paragraph?
• Why did Lincoln choose to use the same word over and over in this short speech instead of picking different words that mean the same thing?
• How does the use of "dedicate" change who Lincoln is talking to or about?
• The teacher can decide to have the students write a short essay now addressing one of the following prompts or do a short lesson on constructing an argumentative essay. If this is the case, the essay can be written during the next class period or assigned for homework. Remind the students that any arguments they make must be backed up with words taken directly from the Gettysburg Address. The first prompt is designed to be the easiest.
• How does Lincoln move us from the beginning of our country to the future of our country in this speech?
• In this speech the word slavery is never used, but make an argument that President Lincoln is talking about abolishing slavery in the speech.
• How does President Lincoln argue that, despite the lives lost, the Civil War is worth fighting for?

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Rhetoric — The Gettysburg Address Rhetorical Analysis

The Gettysburg Address Rhetorical Analysis

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Published: Mar 13, 2024

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