Gettysburg Address

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Lincoln's brief speech at Gettysburg was an unusual event during the Civil War. He had rarely traveled far from Washington, D.C. Moreover, the main speaker of the day was Edward Everett, a renowned orator, a classical scholar, former president of Harvard University, and governor of Massachusetts. The organizers of the event asked the president to make “a few appropriate remarks” (Donald, p. 460). Lincoln declined many such invitations to speak, so the press was surprised when he agreed to travel to Gettysburg. Here, however, was an opportunity to show how the battle of Gettysburg marked a defining moment in the war, and Lincoln had been looking for just such an opportunity to vindicate his handling of this national crisis. Lincoln did not confide in anyone his plans for the Gettysburg Address, but as the biographer David Donald observes, Lincoln realized that Everett, a former Whig, would issue a “conservative call for a return to ‘the Union as it was'” (Donald, p. 462). In effect, this would mean reaffirming state sovereignty, which, in turn, could be taken as condoning a continuation of slavery. Thus Lincoln had to craft a speech that demonstrated why the Union could not return to its former state and why the war, in fact, was the fulfillment of the nation's first principles.

Although legend states that Lincoln improvised his famous speech from a few notes on an envelope, the historical record is clear that he left Washington with a draft of his remarks, which he went over on the train to Gettysburg and, after his arrival, the day before his address. By the morning of the event, he had made a clean copy of his speech, from which he would read. Lincoln, not a very good extemporaneous speaker and prone to making indiscreet remarks, had learned that he would have to make every word count. In a day when presidents did not have speechwriters or a propaganda agency, Lincoln had to rely on his own genius to sway public opinion. On the evening of his arrival in Gettysburg, a crowd assembled, hoping to hear the president direct a few words to them. Lincoln declined their requests, however, wishing to say nothing that might disadvantage the well-wrought speech he would make the next day.

Lincoln arrived in time to tour the battlefield, observing the newly dug graves. More than one hundred seventy thousand soldiers had waged war against one another. Between nine thousand and fifteen thousand people, among them, family members of the fallen; the press; politicians, including cabinet members; and other notables as well as the curious and attention seekers gathered at this historic site. Lincoln sat and listened attentively as Everett spoke for two hours, vividly describing the battle and delivering what many contemporaries hailed as a magnificent oration, while others deplored it for its verbosity.

On this bright day, Lincoln arose, shook Everett's hand, warmly congratulated him, took his speech from his pocket, put on his steel-rimmed glasses, and began: “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.” The cadence of the words evokes the King James Bible. Counting back eighty-seven years refers to the birth of the nation—1776, the date of the Declaration of Independence.

The first paragraph contains one sentence of thirty words and frames the Civil War as dedicated to the purpose of freedom and equality. Rather than reiterating his determination to preserve the Union or, specifically, to end slavery, the president speaks to the American sense of identity; what Americans have in common is this devotion to an idea, a conception of liberty that had given birth to a new nation. In other words, the idea of America is born out of liberty, which, in turn, leads to the proposition of equality. Just how carefully Lincoln chooses not only these precise words but also their cadence is clear when they are compared with informal remarks he made on July 7, 1863, to more than one thousand people serenading him. From his White House balcony, he had asked, “How long is it—eighty odd years—since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representations, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that ‘all men are created equal'” (Donald, p. 459). The “eighty odd years” are replaced with the magisterial and biblical “four score and seven,” a phrase that is both more precise and awe inspiring, a formulation he designs to mark a moment in history. Also note the use of “our fathers,” a way of describing the country's founding as a family matter, an ancestral achievement and one that spreads across a continent. Thus Lincoln, in one deftly turned and exquisitely modulated sentence, beginning with the first two rhyming words that are echoed in “fathers” and “forth,” and in the alliteration of “new nation,” fuses the present with the past, the moment with history. His measured prose reads almost like poetry but without any strained effort to sound poetic.

By invoking the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln emphasizes that the nation is older than its Constitution and the compromises that keep the Union together. Lincoln himself temporizes, announcing his willingness to condone slavery in the South so long as it does not spread to the new territories. He is personally opposed to slavery, but he nevertheless does not support the abolitionist call for the emancipation of the slaves everywhere in the United States. Now, however, Lincoln eschews any such distinctions, realizing the time for any sort of concession to Confederate demands is past. As David Donald observes, the president thus opposes those who are still calling for some kind of accommodation with the South, a negotiated peace that would return the country to the antebellum status quo.

In the second paragraph, Lincoln shifts to a direct discussion of the Civil War, suggesting that it is a test of the American experiment, whether any nation created out of a desire to ensure freedom and equality “can long endure.” In other words, America stands for something more than itself; in effect, it stands for the very idea of liberty. The president repeats the word dedication twice in this paragraph (using it once in the first paragraph), which implies that the country is on a mission requiring devotion, commitment, enthusiasm, and perseverance. Lincoln implies that settling for anything less than the triumph of American principles would be a loss not only of the nation as its founders conceived it but also of the energy and conviction that inspired the world. Referring specifically to the Gettysburg battlefield that becomes a cemetery, the president says that the soldiers had died “here” so that the “nation might live.” This perspective makes no distinction between Union and Confederate dead but rather suggests that their struggle is a confirmation of the country's core beliefs. Indeed, Lincoln never even uses the word soldier, emphasizing instead their commitment to a cause.

Although it is only proper to commemorate their deaths, as Lincoln remarks at the end of the second paragraph, he begins the third paragraph by taking exception to the assumption that any ceremony can “consecrate . . . this ground.” The men who fought the battle have enacted their own consecration, he emphasizes, and words cannot do justice to their sacrifice, to the ground they have hallowed. Nothing we can say, Lincoln insists, can amplify or diminish their courageous actions. This is why he adds in one of his most famous statements that words alone are a “poor power” set beside actions: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” Paradoxically, Lincoln's confession that words are incommensurate with the event's magnitude serves to enhance his own forensic authority. Unlike Everett, who tried to do justice to the battle in thousands of words, Lincoln confesses in twenty-one words that he has no vocabulary that could do justice to Gettysburg's significance. The “we,” moreover, is not merely Lincoln but also everyone gathered to honor the men who have hallowed Gettysburg's ground. Thus the president speaks the words of a nation and not simply his own. Lincoln's use of the word hallowed, with its religious connotations, makes his presence and that of thousands of others a sacred commemoration of lives that have been spent in the service of nation, a nation that must endure in order to memorialize their sacrifice.

“It is for us the living,” Lincoln observes, to carry on the unfinished work of those who have perished in liberty's cause. The way to honor them, in other words, is to dedicate and devote our lives to the noble work begun on the Gettysburg battlefield. It is this call to further action that inspires the president's vision that only the future can make good on the soldiers' sacrifices. In effect, Lincoln creates a kind of democratic saga, in which the dead at Gettysburg ensured the nation's life by stirring their fellow Americans to continue a cause that not only unites the country but also represents a “new birth of freedom,” and a renewed resolve that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Implicitly, Lincoln defends the mission of his own administration, especially his stubborn refusal to consider any compromise that would jeopardize the Union, a continental entity devoted not merely to constitutional liberty but to the cause of equality as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. This is not merely his policy but a sacred trust, “under God,” as he notes in his closing sentence.

The Gettysburg Address is short, like a prayer, and devoid of rationalizations, partisan points, and any sort of defensive argumentation. Although the address can certainly be analyzed for its political implications, its rhetoric soars beyond the terms of its time. As Garry Wills points out in his book-length study of the speech and its ramifications, Lincoln changes the nature of public discourse by perfecting a manner that is both solemn and formal, yet direct, so that it seems he speaks not only for himself but indeed for the nation.

Additional Commentary by Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School

Only 266 words long, the Gettysburg address is perhaps the most famous short speech in the English language; whole books have been written analyzing it. The address was part of a ceremony to dedicate the military cemetery located at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln was not the featured speaker, and his speech was so short that much of the day's audience probably missed it. However, when published, the address immediately captivated the nation for its simplicity, directness, and somber yet uplifting message.

The context of the speech is crucial to understanding its relevance. From July 1 to July 3, 1863, the Union army fought a pitched battle against the Confederate army at Gettysburg. The United States registered its casualties at 23,049, with 3,155 killed in action, 14,529 wounded, and 5,365 missing or captured. Confederate losses were less certain because the Confederate army fled the battle in disarray; whole units were decimated, and so many officers were killed, wounded, or captured that no one was left in command to even tally the losses. The best scholarship has estimated Confederate casualties at 24,000, with at least 3,500 killed, 15,250 wounded (6,800 of whom were also captured), and 5,425 captured unwounded. By any standard, the three-day Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest in American history. The battle was also an overwhelming and decisive victory for the United States and an equally catastrophic defeat for the Confederate army and its commander, General Robert E. Lee.

The battle was the clear turning point of the Civil War; never again would Lee's army be in a position to launch an offensive against the United States. With the fall of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River on July 4, President Lincoln could be confident that victory would eventually be achieved. Six months before Gettysburg, Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, making the war a struggle for liberty as well as a conflict necessary to save the nation. Lincoln was thus able to use the dedication of the Gettysburg military cemetery, four and a half months after the battle, to underscore the high moral purposes of the war, for which so many U.S. soldiers died on this battlefield and all the others.

The address itself is rhetorically powerful, in part because of its simplicity. In an age of lengthy and complex speeches, Lincoln delivered an amazingly short one on November 19, 1863. The speech is almost religious in nature, creating images of what scholars call civil religion. It begins in a biblical fashion, using the term “score” (meaning twenty) to count the years instead of simply stating the exact number. Lincoln ties this scripture-like dating system to “our fathers”—not religious fathers but the fathers of the nation. What happened eighty-seven years ago, in 1776, was the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence. The text then paraphrases that document, noting that the nation was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In the rest of the speech, Lincoln describes the struggle of the United States as a “testing” of the theory of liberty and equality set out in the Declaration of Independence. The message is clear: The “unfinished work” of those who died at Gettysburg is not merely victory but nationwide freedom and equality as well. Lincoln's final sentence is especially powerful and stirring. He asks his countrymen to finish the task before them, that of saving the Union and expanding liberty:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

The final message—that the American experiment in democracy was on the verge of a “new birth of freedom”—reminds the audience that the Civil War was a struggle to destroy not only Confederate treason but also the institution of slavery.