Gettysburg Address Speech Analysis

The historian David Blight says that Lincoln’s message in the Gettysburg Address was to help the people recover from the deficit from the Battle of Gettysburg and the casualties that were caused by it. Lincoln simply wants to rebuild the country.

The tone and stage are set with the background of the great battle field of Gettysburg’s. Our nation is involved in a great civil war between its brothers with two different views and divisions. President Lincoln has the daunting task as the President of the United States to bring healing to this torn country; to remind the country that it was only 87 years earlier that this young country started on its great experiment. The thesis statement answers the question and reminds the audience that all men are created equal and that the basis on which our country was founded on was liberty and equality.

While the Gettysburg Address is fairly short in length at around 300 words, this famous speech delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1963 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania is both enduring and meaningful for all Americans today, almost exactly 146 years later. The first paragraph of his speech sets the tone, in which Lincoln does not directly mention the bloody Battle of Gettysburg, in which 50,000 soldiers lost their lives. Instead, he refers in the opening phrase, “Four score and seven years ago,” to the founding of America through another important written document, the Declaration of Independence in 1776. I believe Lincoln wanted the country to focus on preserving this

union he may have lost the election. In several speeches made by Douglass he expressed "the mission of the war was the liberation of the slaves as well as the salvation of the Union. I reproached the North that they fought with one hand, while they might fight more effectively with two; that they fought with the soft white hand, while they kept the black iron hand chained and helpless behind them; that they fought the effect, while they protected the cause; and said that the Union cause would never prosper until the war assumed an anti-slavery attitude and the Negro was enlisted on the side of the Union." After the announcement of the Proclamation of Emancipation, the Governor of Massachusetts was given permission to create the regiment of

Four and a half months after the Union defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. He gave the Union soldiers a new perspective on the war and something to fight for. Before the address, the Civil War was based solely on states’ rights. Lincoln’s speech has the essence of America and the ideals that were put into the Declaration of Independence by the founders. The sixteenth president of the United States was capable of using his speech to turn a war on states rights to a war on slavery and upholding the principles that America was founded upon. By turning the Civil War into a war that was about slavery he was able to ensure that no foreign

Seven score and fourteen years ago, following the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln stood in front of a crowd of approximately 1,500 people and gave a short speech. His audience included surviving Union soldiers, families of those who perished, and some politicians, all of whom gathered to consecrate the National Cemetery at Gettysburg. The Gettysburg Address, although only 271 words and lasting a mere two minutes, is one of the most well-known speeches in American history. In it, Lincoln argues that though he would like to dedicate the field to the fallen soldiers, there is no way to “add or detract” from the consecration those men gave with their blood (Lincoln). In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln uses the stasis forms of evaluation and proposal to convince his audience of the importance of the fallen soldiers. Using the rhetorical appeals of pathos, appealing to emotions of the distressed soldiers, ethos, catching the attention of his audience with both his diction and his position granting him credibility, and logos, structuring his speech in such a way as to draw in his audience, he successfully resolves his constraints while continually surrounding his argument around the exigence, the loss of life at the Battle of Gettysburg, to the target audience.

In American history, there were always these amazing speakers like John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK), Martian Luther King Jr and others, that would influence the people around them to strive for success, never give up because there will always be hope, and one of those speakers was Abraham Lincoln in possibly his best speech “The Gettysburg Address”. The American civil war was the bloodiest war the Unites States had ever seen roughly 620,000 soldiers died, and in that dark time people needed inspiration to rekindle the flame of hope, to have something worth fighting for and Abraham Lincoln inspired them to fight for their nation and not let those who died for the cause not die in vain. In Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address he used rhetorical appeals, Parallel structure, Contrast, and Allusion to end the American civil war, unite the north and the south to end slavery in the United States once and for all.

Blood, sweat, and tears will always be shed. Maybe you will find bone or even an actual bloody body part on the very land of Gettysburg if you went back in time to the very moment of the war. July 1 to July 3, 1863, will forever go down as the bloodiest moments during the Civil War. The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point during the American Civil War. The American Civil War started because of the differences between the free and enslaved state. They fought over the power of the national governments to forbid slavery in the territories that have yet to become states. The South is also known as the Confederate were at war with the North also known as the Union. After the war Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech, The Gettysburg Address. In his speech he mentioned that the dead who fought shall not die in vain. His speech also addresses the concept of equality and the struggle with equality.

At the time when our country was divided and the Civil War was ongoing, a President delivered one of the most influential speeches of all time; The Gettysburg Address. On November 19, 1863, four months after the Battle at Gettysburg former President Abraham Lincoln addressed the weary soldiers, the deceased soldiers’ family members, and many other citizens that traveled far and wide to attend the dedication ceremony. The dedication was for the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, in the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Over 20,000 people were in attendance, they witnessed first had a powerful and heartfelt speech. Furthermore, it became one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. With 227 words Lincoln planted the seed in the hearts and minds of the people in attendance, with the notion of reforming the nation by discussing the Declaration of Independence, slavery, honoring the dead, dedication to the cause, and new birth of freedom. (LaFantasie 74)

At the beginning of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was primarily focused on the preservation of the Union. It wasn’t until after the Battle of Antietam that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in rebelling states and territories. He believed that emancipating slaves made the war a moral issue and that abolition was necessary to preserve the Union. I believe that as the war went on, Lincoln not only wanted to reunify the country, but abolish slavery as well.

At this point in time, everything had changed. Things were completely different, and would never be the same. We were now at the stage where something needed to be different, and it was crucial. In the Gettysburg Address from president Abraham Lincoln, on November 19, 1863, he was talking about how we had to resolve the differences that we had. He wanted us to not let it get this far, and that we shall not let it happen again. (Doc D) The citizens were changed by everything leading up to this point, and the way everything happened during this battle made us truly open our eyes.

The Gettysburg speech was short, sharp, powerful and one to remember. Still to this day it remains to a well known, well respected speech.

“You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.”

The concept that all men are created equal was an idea that many people didn't really know how to grasp or accept. When the Great Civil War had begun, our nation split into two groups. Confederates; the Southern states did not share this idea that all men are created equal like the Union; the Northern states did. It was up to Lincoln to get the nation into unity as it was once before and in doing so, he gave a speech known as the Gettysburg's Address.

Abraham Lincoln is arguably one of the United States greatest presidents and is well-known for writing one of the most iconic literary pieces in American history, the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is an outstanding 272-word oration, meant to have been a “few appropriate remarks” (Wills), yet it is considered to be one of the greatest speeches ever written, and rightly so. However, Lincoln was not the only one that gave a Gettysburg Address at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, nor was he “the star of the show” (Emberton). Today, many have forgotten the name of Edward Everett and the importance and value of his Gettysburg Address. Edward Everett was chosen as the main speaker at the ceremony and gave a 2-hour oration, preceding Lincoln’s 2-minute dedicatory remarks, that was highly praised among critics and the audience. Everett’s qualifications, his message within his speech, and his overall purpose have greatly contributed to the value of his Gettysburg Address. Today, it is clear to see that Lincoln’s Address has overshadowed Everett’s Address, but that wasn’t the case in 1863. The question left to answer, should Everett’s Gettysburg Address be considered just as valuable and praiseworthy as Lincoln’s speech?