The Gettysburg Address Study Guide

The life of Abraham Lincoln epitomizes the classic American story of rising from humble origins through hard work, persevering despite formidable obstacles, and achieving success as well as lasting fame.  The future 16th president of the United States was born in a log cabin to an impoverished and itinerant family on the Kentucky frontier.  Growing up, Lincoln engaged in typical tasks of a young man in a pioneering community, working on the farm, splitting logs, and building the homestead.  While he had practically no formal schooling, Lincoln’s love for reading, particularly the Bible, became the foundation of his self-education.  Lincoln’s political career began in 1834 when, after a failed campaign two years earlier, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives and served until 1841.  After two years as a representative in the U.S. Congress from 1847-1849, Lincoln ran for the senate in 1858, an election that catapulted him into the national spotlight, thanks to a series of debates (the Lincoln-Douglas debates) showcasing his talent for public speaking.  Lincoln lost the senate election but won the White House in 1860.  His first year in office, the Civil War began and lasted throughout his presidency; five days after the surrender of the Confederacy, Lincoln was assassinated.  His leadership during the Civil War, including the watershed signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the war’s successful end, prevented the dissolving of the nation.  As such, Lincoln is consistently ranked by scholars as the greatest president in U.S. history.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the most northern point achieved by Confederate forces in the Civil War.  A successful invasion into the northern states at Gettysburg could have led to the occupation of Washington, D.C., but after a three-day-long battle from July 1st to July 3rd in 1863, Union forces triumphed.  While the Battle of Gettysburg marked the definitive turning point of the Civil War in favor of Union victory, the war was far from over, and Lincoln needed his country’s support.  At the dedication of a national cemetery on the site of the battle where 51,000 soldiers died in combat––the most costly battle in United States history–– Lincoln delivered a short address before an audience of 15,000 people.  Without cursing the Confederacy or lapsing into jingoism, Lincoln interpreted the democratic significance of the war in the Gettysburg Address, which he had expounded upon in an earlier war address in 1861:  “On the side of the Union, it [the war] is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men––to lift the artificial weights from all shoulders––to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all––to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”  Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address became a hallmark of American rhetoric and a definitive statement of the country’s core values.

Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of the most eloquent public speakers in American history, yet he gave very few public addresses.  After accepting the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination to the United States Senate, Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech in response to the country’s deepening divisions over the issue of slavery.  Alluding to the words of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Lincoln boldly declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”  In addition to the “House Divided” speech and address at Gettysburg, Lincoln is equally remembered for his second inaugural address, delivered only a few weeks before the end of the Civil War.  The speech echoes his call in the Gettysburg Address for Americans to dedicate themselves to the “unfinished work” of the war.  Seeing an end in sight to the Civil War, Lincoln pleads at the end of the address for a spirit of reconciliation: “With malice toward none; with charity for all…let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.”  Unlike the long-windedness that characterized the rhetoric of his day, Lincoln sought to relate to his audience, writing and speaking in a concise style that never sacrificed poignancy or richness of content. Other significant speeches in American rhetorical history include Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman? speech (1851) and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, I Have a Dream speech (1963), both of which deal with the practical outworking of founding American principles. Michael Shaara’s 1974 novel The Killer Angels tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg from a fictional perspective.