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Rhetorical Analysis Of The Gettysburg Address

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In July of 1963, half way through the civil war, the battle of Gettysburg erupted. The fate of the nation literally hung in the balance of a battle that started as a skirmish over shoes then turned into one of the bloodiest and most crucial battles of the civil war. Four months later the battlefield of Gettysburg was to be turned into a Soldiers National Cemetery for the twenty thousand Union soldiers that lost their lives in this horrific battle. During the dedication ceremony President Lincoln gave his renowned speech the Gettysburg Address. President Lincoln used this opportunity deliver a message to the local dignitaries in hopes of unifying the country as the Founding Fathers would have wanted, to honor the fallen soldiers, and gave the audience a task to preserve the union of their Nation. But how did he accomplish all of this in a well written, short, two-minute speech? To find out why Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was so effective one must analyze all three of the rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos, and pathos, that Lincoln used to shift skeptical people toward his vision. Also, his tone and length of speech that added to its success. The first appeal that President Lincoln touched on in the Gettysburg Address was ethos. He did not try to use his own character to reinforce his point, even though he was the President at the time. As a substitute, he started his speech by saying “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men are created equal’” (Transcript of Gettysburg Address (1863).) By saying “our fathers” he brought himself down to the same levels as the public he was speaking to and that these battles were not for him, they we for the founding fathers that signed the Declaration of Independence eighty-seven years prior. They were the men the fallen soldiers had fought for. They were the men that said, “all men are created equal”. Lincoln did not want to be the reason why the soldiers gave their lives. He wanted to remind the public that the war was being fought in the name of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence and the men that fought for the nations

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