TOW #19 - The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln - Written

On November 19th, 1863, following the Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln gave a two-minute address to an audience gathered for a consecration ceremony of the Gettysburg battleground. Lincoln was the President of the United States, and was spearheading the largest conflict the US had seen to that point. Lincoln's speech served both to honor the fallen soldiers at gettysburg and to make a statement about the renewed purpose and cause behind the civil war. Lincoln achieves these ends by making strong use of repetition and reverent diction throughout the address. Lincoln repeats many different figures and words throughout the address to place greater emphasis on the ideas he presents. He repeats words such as "nation," "liberty," "freedom," and "dedicated" in order to reinforce the idea of a dedicated, free nation that he is trying to uphold by partaking in the civil war. The freedom part mostly comes from his then-new purpose of freeing the slaves, giving his war a moral backing - freeing those in bondage to support morality and the constitution. Lincoln's use of reverent language in the Gettysburg address helps to emphasize Lincoln's purpose in honoring the dead who lay at Gettysburg's battlefield. Saying things like "we cannot consecrate," and "far above our poor power to add or detract" give his speech an air of truly looking up to and respecting the men who died at Gettysburg, giving his speech an ethos that really touches the audience and helps them to understand the purpose behind the war and the great moral struggle that the UNion and Confedracy were entrenched in. 7/10 would read again