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Gettysburg Address Interpretation

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The Gettysburg Address was presented on November 19th, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln to dedicate a cemetery for fallen Union soldiers. Since 1863 the Gettysburg Address has became more famous than Lincoln could ever imagine, being shared and analyzed in almost every classroom in America. What most people do not know is that Lincoln wrote five different versions of the Gettysburg Address, all copies are very similar except for minor changes. If we compare one of Lincoln's first drafts (Nicolay) with his final version (Bliss) we can see several small changes, one of the most significant being the addition of “Under God” after “this nation”. If Lincoln had chosen to use his first copy of the Gettysburg Address, I feel that the speech would still be one of the most famous speeches in history due to its simplicity, directness, and movement it carries with americans. One of the key differences between the two versions of the address is Lincoln's attempt at simplifying it. In Lincoln's first attempt he uses the line “This we may, in all propriety do.” which he later replaced with, “It is altogether fitting and proper that …show more content…

I do not think he intentionally stopped using quotation marks around “all men are created equal,” because he felt he was not borrowing them, but rather because he wanted the words to be as powerful as they could possible be. All men created equal means that every single man ever is equal to the next person. When using quotes around an important line it could be taken as if it was up for interpretation. This war was being fought over equality to all men, and if Lincoln had kept his quotes around this line it might have been furthermore

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