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 Gettysburg Address back to Lincoln a year and a half after he delivered it. But what makes the Gettysburg Address great? It is my contention that there are three separate elements to this brief piece of oratory which may be understood as constituting the basic foundation of the greatness of the Gettysburg Address. The first element is Lincoln's mastery of the basic techniques of English prose and oratory, which can be seen in even a cursory examination of the text. The second element of the Address's greatness is its brevity and concision: the speech has fewer than 300 words and took Lincoln only two minutes to recite in 1863. The third element, however, is perhaps the most important -- and this is the Gettysburg Address's sense of irony. I do not mean the irony whereby Lincoln claimed it would not be remembered but it is still so memorable one hundred and fifty years later -- I mean the structural irony around which the long final paragraph of the Address turns. I hope to demonstrate that these three elements all combine to make the Gettysburg Address the great and enduring work that it is.
Although Abraham Lincoln received little formal schooling, the Gettysburg Address demonstrates a mastery of the various formal techniques of English prose. As someone who educated himself in how to write and speak, Lincoln presumably learned in the best possible way, by exposing himself to great texts of the past. But we may see in just the first sentence a number of salient literary techniques that Lincoln employs so well. Lincoln begins:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Because the speech and its opening are so familiar to us, it is worth viewing with fresh eyes the various...
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.
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
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
Grant possessed in superb degree the ability to think of the war in overall terms, however his grand plan of operations that ended the war was at least partly Lincoln's in concept (Williams). Grant conformed his strategy to Lincoln's known ideas: "hit the Confederacy from all sides with pulverizing blows and make enemy armies, not cities, his main objective" (Williams). Grant submitted the broad outlines of his plan to
Atzerodt also made a statement claiming knowledge of a Confederate plot to bomb the White House. The Union's failed raid on Richmond was also approved by Lincoln, and it was later believed that he ordered the death of Jeff Davis in a strategy to end the war. Such speculations were extremely damaging for the strength of the government, and similar conspiracy theories fascinate historians to this day. In this,
Lincoln -- A Very Short Introduction When Americans -- including many students -- hear the name Abraham Lincoln, the first things that come to mind is his effort to free the slaves, his Gettysburg Address, his Emancipation Proclamation, and the untimely assassination of Lincoln. But there are sources of worthy and even fascinating background biographical information available about the 16th president of the United States, and one of the best contemporary
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