The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

The multiple meanings of “dedicated” in the speech thus far––the dedication of the soldiers and a nation dedicated to democracy––will assist Lincoln later when he calls for the audience’s dedication to the ongoing war. In this sentence, Lincoln reuses the word to address the purpose of the ceremony and the task of the audience: dedicating the national cemetery to honor the sacrifice of the dead soldiers. In the previous two sentences, the word “dedicated” is used in the context of the commitment to democracy. Moreover, this sentence, with its overtones of the Declaration and Lincoln’s expansion of one of its core propositions, introduces one of the speech’s major sets of themes: liberty, equality, and freedom. Thus, Lincoln reinterprets not only the Declaration of Independence but American history by foregrounding the founding principle of the United States as a nation built upon the idea of equality for everyone, including slaves––a principle that superseded the Constitution as it existed in 1863. While Thomas Jefferson may not have envisioned equal rights extending to slaves when writing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Lincoln appropriates Jefferson’s words and implicitly understands them as encompassing the enslaved persons for whom the war is being fought. founding document ratified in 1787 that outlines the framework of the federal government and that initially protected the institution of slavery.

Lincoln deliberately refers to the Declaration of Independence as opposed to the Constitution, the U. Signed in 1776 by representatives of the original thirteen British colonies, this founding document of the United States declared the colonies’ separation from Great Britain and established a new country of “free and independent states.” Lincoln ends the sentence with a quotation from the Declaration: “all men are created equal.” This direct reference alludes to the central cause of the Civil War––the institution of slavery in southern states and its potential expansion in new U.S. The Declaration of Independence and its historical significance serves as the foundation for the opening sentence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln