What does the Gettysburg Address mean to you?

Question

What does the Gettysburg Address mean to you? I need some different ideas for my english essay.. I have a few.. but more would be helpful.. Thanks!

Answer 1

It's nice poetry, but its meaning is crap.

Take a passage such as, "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."

Whose dead? The Union's? The Confederacy's? It would make no sense to refer to all the dead--after all, they were fighting each other. One side's soldiers *had* to die in vain--namely, the Confederacy's, because they lost.

And his closing passage, "...that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

But Lincoln was fighting for precisely the opposite of these ideals. The Civil War was fought because the people of the South wanted the right to govern themselves, whereas Lincoln wanted to impose Federal rule on those States.

What most people don't understand is that the United States, up until this point, had a very weak Federal government. The States had far more control over their own internal affairs than they do today (thanks to Lincoln), and the citizens of those States considered themselves to be as much Tennesseans, Virginians, Georgians or whatever, as much as they were Americans.

Lincoln ended that. And thereby paved the way for Federal control over the minute details of our lives--from making sure we buckle up when we drive, to how many gallons our toilet tanks are allowed to hold. What we must learn in school, and what drugs, prescription or otherwise, we are allowed to use.

So when I say that Lincoln's speech was beautiful crap, what I mean is that it was full of this sort of thing--stirring words that conveyed no meaning, due to their self-contradiction and ignorance of reality.

Answer 2

My daughter once had to copy the Gettysburg Address three times as a form of discipline from her music teacher. My husband is the historian, he's thinking now: " The Gettysburg Address was the decisive instrument that bound the wounds of a torn nation. The conflict had pitted brother against brother, and President Lincoln used this declaration to apply balm which cured hatred and derision." Didn't I marry a brilliant man?

Answer 3

The Gettysburg Address was a brief oration delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on 19 November 1863 during the dedication ceremony of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The entire speech consisted of 272 words and took approximately three minutes to deliver. Its simple eloquence and evocation of transcendent themes are recognized as one of, if not the greatest, speech in American politics. Demonstrating the quintessence of Lincoln's thought concerning the sacred nature of liberty embodied in the democratic experiment, the address is heralded with transforming Northern opinion about the "unfinished work" of war before them and ultimately revolutionizing how Americans understood the nature of the Republic.

Lincoln's brief speech, honored the Union dead and the principles of democracy and equality they died for.

Answer 4

1. The first, and most cool, thing to realize about the address is that the man who spoke before Lincoln, Edward Everett, spoke for over 2 hours in a speech of over 13,000 words. Lincoln spoke for 2 or 3 minutes...about 300 words. (cite the source on this info)

2. Lincoln was our best writing president, his sentences are beautifully crafted and almost poetic. No word is meaningless and each word is used perfectly. This is why he could say so much in so few words. Honestly, the most famous speech in our history only took 3 minutes?

3. What Lincoln was saying (in talking about what happened on that bloody battlefield) is that our foolish attempts to "hallow" the ground that those thousands died on does nothing compared to what those brave soldiers did. What we NEED to do, he said, is pick up their cause...which was to fight for a country that believes only in the freedom of all people. It was a cause they were willing to die for and one we must finish fighting for them, because they can't do it anymore.

Answer 5

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

Good Luck!!!

Answer 6

it a dedication to the lives that were lost,,,, and that we needed to preserve the nation