Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" is one of the most famous speeches in American history, learned by heart by many schoolchildren, with phrases that have rung down through the ages. The speech is not merely of historical importance but also serves as a prime example of rhetorical structure in spite of the fact that it was probably "dashed off" by its author almost as an afterthought because of the need to make a speech at a certain place for a specific occasion.
Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, presided over the most divisive event in American history, the Civil War. The details of Lincoln's life in general terms are well known--how he was born in a log cabin on the frontier, how he walked five miles to school every day, how he dedicated himself to learning, how he became an attorney, how he entered politics and eventually became president of the United States (David D. Anderson 21-30). When Lincoln came to office, it was at a time of tension in the body politic as conflict between the North and the South was increasing to such a degree that a split seemed to be in the offing. Lincoln began his presidency by defining himself as god's instrument for saving the Union:
In this role he interpreted the meaning of the war as divine punishment for collective sins, which offered the nation a means of atonement. By 1865, with the cost of saving the Union to be measured in terms of 600,000 Civil War dead, Lincoln had removed all evidence of his own intermediary presence, admitting that neither he nor anyone else could claim exclusive knowledge of divine intentions (Dwight G. Anderson 159).
Yet, Lincoln carried through his idea of a spiritual intervention in the affairs of men again and again in his speeches and writings, and he saw in the war between North and South an image of sacrificial death and rebirth that would become the central metaphor in the Gettysburg Address,
which, in three short pa...