Gettysburg a New Birth of Freedom and Why



Gettysburg a New Birth of Freedom and Why

The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato calls rhetoric the “art of enchanting the soul.” The early American preacher, social reformer, and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher says there is nothing more powerful on earth than the function of the “living voice” and that rhetoric should influence the “conduct of humanity, of patriotism and of religion.” This notion of how the spoken word, can be a powerful, transforming, tool that impacts humanity, patriotism and religion defines Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This paper explores the context, the content and the oration of the address at Gettysburg.

According to historian and author Gary Wills, Abraham Lincoln had, “done what he wanted to do at Gettysburg.”

This means that Lincoln far surpassed the obvious objective of merely presiding over a ceremony that consecrated the grounds of the Gettysburg battlefield. There was much more at stake at the national level than just honoring those who fought. The battle however does set the context for Lincoln's speech. Only four months earlier on July 1-3, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 160,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought out the most severe battle of the American Civil War; a war which was ignited by the secession of the slave-owning southern states from the anti-slave Northern states.

Lincoln had the difficult task of healing a divided nation. A country divided perhaps in ways that current United States citizens cannot even begin to fathom. Today the country might find itself divided into “Red” and “Blue” states, designations that distinguish by political party affiliation. Today the country might also find itself caught-up in a “cultural war,” a division and disagreement about social values which pits the “liberal left” against the “radical right”. Neither of these current examples of divisions comes even close to the challenges Lincoln faced in bringing together two halves of a nation that was divided by irreconcilable differences. The differences were irreconcilable due to the fact that both, the North and the South, were determined by what each considered constitutional imperatives.

The Civil War was the result of an unprecedented battle of colliding ideals. The Southern states being concerned with the sovereignty; the Northern states concerned with inalienable rights of the individual. The objective therefore for Lincoln was not only presiding over a memorial in which thousands tragically died or to give a good speech. Rather the objective and theme of the Gettysburg Address was according to Gary Wills was one where Lincoln, wanted to “relate all the most sensitive issues of the day to the Declaration of Independence supreme principle.”

The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, all of these had a common thread according to Lincoln. That thread was the idea that, “popular government is not an absurdity”. The stakes could not be higher for Lincoln but also for the future of the United States. If the country could not come together, than the enterprise of democracy and the belief in people governing themselves was a ...