¶ … Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln gave the speech called the "Gettysburg Address" on November 19, 1863. In it he tries to look into the future and justify the deaths of the soldiers he has been asked to honor. He sees the future of the "new nation" that his ancestors dreamed of when they arrived on the North American continent, seeking freedom and liberty, for once on an equal basis with everyone else who had just arrived in this virgin land; no one richer or poorer than or with any kind of unnatural advantage over anyone else. Each person was on an equal footing with everyone else who had just arrived. This was what they wanted and what they wanted for their children's future. He said that the soldiers lying in Gettysburg cemetery had died for this kind of nation, a nation dedicated to liberty, where all men (and women) are equal to everyone else.
He speaks of the civil war that he had seen come about because the South wanted to retain slavery. He speaks of civil wars in general, saying that a nation cannot endure a civil war for long. He said especially a nation conceived for the purposes of liberty cannot allow part of the people living in it to be enslaved to others living in that same nation. He said that the soldiers who had fought and died here struggled to preserve the ideal of liberty for every person. He said that their blood had been spilled because they had dedicated themselves to a cause in a way no living person could, that they gave their life for freedom, something that had not yet come about.
Lincoln felt that those soldiers' work was unfinished, and that those listening needed to increase the effort to finish the task the soldiers had died for, so these dead soldiers would not have died in vain. The cause he spoke of was to ensure that freedom and liberty should belong to every person in this nation. No one should belong to anyone else or to any government, but the government should belong to and be ruled by the people. He ends with a wish that this kind of government, belonging to the people and ruled by the people should never end.
Spiritualism of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln was not know as a religious man, in fact he never joined a church in Washington D.C. during his entire time as President. But Abraham Lincoln was also a man who was well versed in the Bible and went on to developed a deep personal spirituality during his time as President. Not only did he suffer the personal loss of one of his
His moving speech offers heartfelt appreciation for those who left their families and the comforts of their homes for the sake of preserving the Union. Lincoln respectfully refrains from disparaging the secessionists. The President of the nation could do no less, considering that the main Union goal was to reunite North and South into one United States. Isolating or insulting the South would have been a dreadful political move
Gettysburg Address President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address encapsulates a major historical irony -- although Lincoln in his brief dedicatory speech claimed that "the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here," it is not hard to argue in 2013 that the Gettysburg Address has nevertheless become Lincoln's most noteworthy and memorable work. Indeed the Hollywood film "Lincoln" begins with the somewhat implausible scene of Union soldiers reciting the
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. From these humble beginnings the first born son of Thomas, an uneducated farmer, and Nancy Hanks, Lincoln would grow to become the 16th President of the United States. In 1997 William Riding Jr. And Stuart B. McIver asked a group of 719 professors, elected officials, historians, attorneys, authors and other professionals to rate the presidents.
These were all matters that needed consideration and which attracted the support of the North. His Inaugural Address tried to point them out. In this sense, he considered that the "maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the
In 1837, Lincoln took highly controversial position that foreshadowed his future political path. He joined with five other legislators out of eighty-three to oppose a resolution condemning abolitionists. In 1838, he responded to the death of the Illinois abolitionist and newspaper editor, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who was killed while defending his printing presses from a mob of pro-slavery citizens in Alton, Illinois. In a statesmanlike manner, Lincoln gave a cautious
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