The Gettysburg Address Paper

Tara Okunade

3/11/08

AP English 3

2nd Prd

The Gettysburg Address

Imagine being a soldier in a great war, and some of your comrades have been shot down, and there they lay: Dead. Wouldn’t your spirits be lowered? This was the story of the soldiers in the Civil War who watched their friends die and couldn’t do anything about it. On November 19, 1863, the United States was in the middle of a war between the north and the south. This marked the turning point of the way things were ran at that time and it became the symbol of hope for many people who just wanted to be free.

Abraham Lincoln, Former president and also a general in the war, gave a speech to uphold and encourage the spirits of the weary soldiers in his army. The speech was called the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was very specific and delicate with his tone in order to encourage the weak, acknowledge the deceased, and motivate the detoured.

Lincoln begins his speech by speaking about the past in which the founding fathers established this country in equality. “ Fourscore 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.” This was very important because that was exactly the opposite of what was going on in this country during that time. America in the late 1800s was a time of slavery. That was one of the main reasons the Civil War was declared.

Lincoln then continues on to speak of how the war being fought was a test to the nation. “ Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” Lincoln used the word “ we” several tines in his speech in order to promote a sense of unity, one of the themes of this speech, and to show that he acknowledges the soldiers as a team. “ We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do.” Lincoln makes a big rhetorical shift in the middle of his speech talking about the nation as a whole, and then focusing on the soldiers in general. “ But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground.” In this speech, Lincoln uses repetition many times to stress specific things that are important. Lincoln repeats the phrase “We cannot” three times in a row to show that they really cannot make better of make worse the ground that is being dedicated to those who had passed on. “ … We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, and we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it. Far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Lincoln’s revady of the speech is two hundred. I believe it was this short because Lincolns audience was the soldiers and he knew that they were tired, weary and discouraged. He wanted to find a way to awaken that drive that hey once had for fighting in the war, because