Gettysburg Address

Audience

President Lincoln intended the Gettysburg Address for the whole nation. He was not commemorating a Union victory or denigrating the southern cause. He sought, on the contrary, to pay tribute to the nobility of the battle, implying that all concerned were fighting for a notion of freedom and equality. Thus, issues like slavery had to be excluded from the speech. Only, perhaps, in the phrase “new birth of freedom” could Lincoln's words be interpreted as obliquely referring to the liberation of African Americans, although even this phrase is abstract enough to encompass the notion that the idea of freedom has been given new life on the Gettysburg site. By invoking the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln could build on principles that both sides in the Civil War revered, whatever their differences with respect to who could actually be considered free and equal.

More specifically, however, Lincoln's audience was composed of different factions: those who wanted a negotiated peace with the South, those who contemplated allowing the South to secede, and those who wanted to be reassured that Lincoln would persevere in pursuing the war until the South was defeated and brought back into the Union. Lincoln's aim was to rise above the political dissension of his day and affix the nation's attention to the universal implications of the Gettysburg battle and to the future generations who would bear the responsibility for fulfilling the cause of freedom and equality that these soldiers so nobly died to promote, not only for American citizens but also for the world.