Lincoln opens his address at Gettysburg by evoking the nation’s past in his reference to the birth of the United States. The speech’s middle section honors the sacrifices of the soldiers and addresses the importance of the present moment (the dedication of the national cemetery) while also highlighting the ceremony’s limited significance. In the final sentence, the past and present collide as Lincoln looks beyond the deaths of the soldiers and towards the future: a rebirth of the nation’s founding democratic values. This sentence begins in the same way as the previous sentence (“It is for us the living, rather…”), but with a minor variation (“It is rather for us…”) that maintains just enough emphasis to underscore Lincoln’s message without becoming repetitive. Structurally, the sentence comprises a series of relative clauses that intertwine many of the speech’s core themes. In the first relative clause, the “honored dead” become the inspiration for the commitment to the Civil War and the war’s significance in the struggle for liberty, equality, and freedom. The second relative clause builds upon the first: While the audience may not have the power to hallow the ground on which the soldiers gave their lives, they
do have the power to ensure that their deaths have meaning, a claim that signals Lincoln’s implicit encouragement for the audience to support the war. In the penultimate clause, Lincoln transitions from the present into the future with the image of birth that harkens back to the opening sentence. Here, Lincoln asserts that despite what seems like an impending death, the nation will not only survive but be reborn––unified and committed to the principle that all men, including the enslaved persons whose humanity is being championed in the present war, are created equal. The last clause contains one of the most quoted phrases in American culture––“a government of the people, by the people, for the people”––which serves as a shorthand definition for the meaning of democracy. Lincoln omits the traditional conjunction that appears before the final item in a series, giving the phrase perfect balance, and the repetition of “the people” reminds the audience of their role as the stewards of democracy. The final words of Lincoln’s address envision that a successful end to the Civil War will ensure that democracy will live on, not only in the nation of the United States, but the entire world. Thus, Lincoln’s final sentence completes the speech’s cycles of past, present, and future as well as birth, death, and rebirth.