The Gettysburg Address

by

Abraham Lincoln

The Gettysburg Address Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Eighty-seven years ago, the United States became a nation based upon the principle of liberty and the idea that “all men are created equal.”
The Declaration of Independence and its historical significance serves as the foundation for the opening sentence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  Signed in 1776 by representatives of the original thirteen British colonies, this founding document of the United States declared the colonies’ separation from Great Britain and established a new country of “free and independent states.”  Lincoln ends the sentence with a quotation from the Declaration: “all men are created equal.”   This direct reference alludes to the central cause of the Civil War––the institution of slavery in southern states and its potential expansion in new U.S. territories.  Lincoln deliberately refers to the Declaration of Independence as opposed to the Constitution, the U. S. founding document ratified in 1787 that outlines the framework of the federal government and that initially protected the institution of slavery. While Thomas Jefferson may not have envisioned equal rights extending to slaves when writing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Lincoln appropriates Jefferson’s words and implicitly understands them as encompassing the enslaved persons for whom the war is being fought.  Thus, Lincoln reinterprets not only the Declaration of Independence but American history by foregrounding the founding principle of the United States as a nation built upon the idea of equality for everyone, including slaves––a principle that superseded the Constitution as it existed in 1863.  Moreover, this sentence, with its overtones of the Declaration and Lincoln’s expansion of one of its core propositions, introduces one of the speech’s major sets of themes: liberty, equality, and freedom.
Themes
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A civil war has put to the test the survival of not only the United States, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, but other nations founded on liberty as well.
In the opening sentence of the address, Lincoln evokes the past; the second sentence transitions to the present.  He appeals to his audience by using inclusive language, specifically the pronoun “we”; the war involves everyone, not just soldiers, generals, politicians, and presidents.  In this sentence, Lincoln beckons his audience to understand the stakes behind the country’s catastrophic divisions and the horrific casualties of the past two years.  For Lincoln, the Civil War is the ultimate test of the survival of the nation and the defining democratic ideals for which the country stands––a matter of life and death for the United States.  Moreover, the implications of the war extend beyond the survival of American democracy to the survival of other nations founded upon similar ideas.
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President Lincoln is delivering his address to an audience on the site of the Gettysburg battle.
After explaining the significance of the Civil War, Lincoln continues his use of inclusive language, reminding the audience of their physical location at the site of the battle of Gettysburg.  This battle, which raged the first three days of July in 1863, is considered to be the deadliest battle in the Civil War and the most costly battle in American history, with 51,000 casualties.  Moreover, it is also considered by historians as the turning point of the Civil War in which Union forces began to triumph over the Confederacy.  Given the symbolic significance of the war that Lincoln claims in the previous sentence, this sense of place gives rise to the association that Gettysburg is not just a battlefield of the Civil War; it is the battlefield of the fight for democracy.
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This site is being dedicated to those who died in battle.  These deaths have significance, as they have afforded the possibility of continued life for the United States as a nation.
In the previous two sentences, the word “dedicated” is used in the context of the commitment to democracy.  In this sentence, Lincoln reuses the word to address the purpose of the ceremony and the task of the audience: dedicating the national cemetery to honor the sacrifice of the dead soldiers.  The multiple meanings of “dedicated” in the speech thus far––the dedication of the soldiers and a nation dedicated to democracy––will assist Lincoln later when he calls for the audience’s dedication to the ongoing war.  Not only does Lincoln mention the purpose of the ceremony; he subtly clarifies the purpose of the war itself and offers a subliminal commentary on the speech’s major themes of liberty, freedom, and equality: For Lincoln, freedom comes at a cost, and the continued life of the nation depends upon the sacrifices of the soldiers who died on the land where Lincoln is delivering his address (“…those who here gave their lives, that the nation might live.”).  Lincoln continues his use of the pronoun “we” which highlights the unity he seeks for the divided country, and he refrains from differentiating between the soldiers of the Union and those of the Confederacy.  Rejecting exclusive language that could underscore divisions in the country, Lincoln implicitly recognizes the cemetery as the resting place of American soldiers, both Union and Confederate.
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It is appropriate to dedicate this land to those who died in battle.
While it might be easy to dismiss this short sentence as insignificant, it carries subtle importance.  Lincoln will go on in the following sentences to seek the audience’s support for the ongoing war, but to do so outright would be sheer propaganda and disrespectful, suggesting that Lincoln’s sole purpose for attending the ceremony is to shift attention away from the dead soldiers to the war and himself.  Prior to his address at Gettysburg, Lincoln had been portrayed in print media as unsympathetic towards the casualties of the war, despite the fact that he would write personal letters to the families who lost loved ones in battle.  While he does need the audience’s support for the war to ensure a Union victory, guaranteeing that the United States and its democratic values can survive, Lincoln does not exploit his invitation to speak for political gain.  Instead, he expresses his esteem for the dead and confirms his support for the national cemetery.
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In fact, however, it is not possible to dedicate this site, make it sacred, or make it worthy of respect.
Roughly one-third of the way through the speech, Lincoln begins leading the audience to reconsider the purpose of this ceremony.  While not unsympathetic to the idea, Lincoln is skeptical that any living person can endow spiritual significance to a concrete reality.  How can any ceremony truly give justice to the sacrifices of 51,000 soldiers?  Lincoln’s emphatic sixth sentence of the Gettysburg Address lays the groundwork for his claim that the audience should commit themselves to the underlying reason why these soldiers sacrificed their lives.
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The living and dead soldiers who fought bravely in the Battle of Gettysburg have already made the site sacred.  President Lincoln and his audience are powerless to do so.
Here, Lincoln continues his treatment of themes related to life and death.  Why is it impossible to dedicate the land to the dead soldiers?  Just as the nation’s survival is made possible by the deaths of the soldiers, Lincoln reveals an additional significance of their deaths.  In a reversal that rhetorically undermines the purpose of the ceremony, Lincoln claims that the soldiers, through their sacrifices, have already accomplished this task, and the audience can do nothing else.
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In the future, no one will remember the commemorative speeches of dedication, but no one will forget the soldiers’ fighting on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Lincoln’s reference to the world returns the audience back to the global implications of the Civil War, which he outlines in the second sentence.  Throughout the speech, Lincoln repeats the word “here,” which continually emphasizes the importance of the land on which the speech is delivered, the land where “brave men” “gave their lives.”  However, “here” carries a special resonance as Lincoln considers not only the reality of this moment and the soldiers’ sacrifices, but its larger significance in world history.
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Instead of dedicating this site to the dead soldiers, the living audience should dedicate themselves to the war and the principle of liberty for which the soldiers fought and died.
Now that Lincoln has rhetorically overturned the purpose of the ceremony dedicating the National Cemetery, Lincoln continues to shift the focus of the speech away from the dead to the “living” as the subliminal purpose of his speech is revealed––to rouse support for the ongoing Civil War.  By 1863, the war had dragged on for two years, with a number of casualties never before seen in American history and mass destruction throughout the south. Moreover, opposition to the Civil War was far-reaching, from politicians to the general populace, including a series of deadly draft riots in New York City that occurred only a week after the Battle of Gettysburg.  In his address, Lincoln is careful to avoid any unpleasant associations with a widely unpopular war.  For the fourth time, he repeats the word “dedicated” which now extends not only to the country’s democratic ideals and the soldiers who died in battle, but to the members of the audience.  Instead of “war,” he says “unfinished work” and qualifies this work as “nobly advanced” by the soldiers.  This diction lends dignity and prestige to Lincoln’s cause, indicating to the audience that the Civil War and the task of ensuring the survival of democracy are worthy projects.
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 Again, the living audience should be dedicated to the war and the principle of liberty, and the dead soldiers are the motivation for this dedication.  This way, the deaths of these soldiers will not be meaningless, and freedom and democratic government will not only persist but begin anew.
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.
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