19 pages • 38 minutes read
Gettysburg Address
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Themes
Honoring Those Who Died for a Great Cause
Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg opens by noting that the United States began as a country dedicated to freedom and equality, but that the conflict between North and South threatens those ideals. If the country breaks apart permanently, this might be the death knell of the great experiment in liberty that is the US.
Lincoln wishes to honor the soldiers who died during the recent Battle of Gettysburg in defense of American unity. For him, this task is so important that those who perish while protecting it do themselves much more honor than any living person can offer them: “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract” (Paragraph 4). Nevertheless, it’s vital to honor them to keep alive the cause of liberty.
Lincoln thus equates the soldiers’ sacrifices with the continued existence of the values they defended. Without their “last full measure of devotion” (Paragraph 5), those values would likely lie in shambles, soon to be consigned to oblivion. Without the American experiment, the world would lose a beacon of hope for those everywhere who care about freedom and dignity. This is why people “can never forget what they did here” (Paragraph 4); to do so would be tantamount to abandoning freedom and democracy themselves. Over the course of the speech, the meaning of “honor” subtly shifts in keeping with this idea. Where we typically think of honor as something we choose to bestow in recognition of another person’s virtues, Lincoln ultimately frames it as a moral duty on the part of those doing the honoring; rather than the battlefield, it is Lincoln and his audience who are “dedicated” through the soldiers’ sacrifice.
Rededication to the Cause of Freedom
Lincoln’s opening allusion to the founding of the United States frames the Civil War not only as a threat to the American Revolution’s legacy, but also as a continuation of it. By leading listeners from the founding dream of America to the crucial Battle of Gettysburg and its place in a war to liberate all the people of the nation, he implies that the work of the American Revolution is still unfinished. Consequently, the Union soldiers who perished on the battlefield at Gettysburg “shall not have died in vain” only if the living rededicate themselves to the soldiers’ cause (Paragraph 5): a reunified United States that promises freedom and equality to all.
Lincoln ultimately hopes that America “shall have a new birth of freedom” (Paragraph 5). This has a double meaning. A victory by the North would enable a fractured nation to reunite, reinforce its crusade for liberty, and preserve the still-fragile ideal of a “government of the people ... by the people ... for the people” (Paragraph 5). In addition, the “new birth of freedom” would remove the yoke of slavery from the backs of African Americans. Lincoln is the country’s chief champion of abolition; he means to bring the South back into the Union with its slaves freed and its people once again a part of the great experiment in human liberty for all.
This “new birth,” like the speech as a whole, also has strongly religious overtones; for Lincoln’s predominantly Christian audience, the phrase would have been inseparable from the idea of spiritual rebirth and resurrection. There is thus an implicit analogy between the soldiers’ sacrifice and Jesus’s death, which gives Lincoln’s rhetoric additional weight. Those who heed his call to action aren’t merely involved in a political or even a moral project, but in a spiritual struggle and crusade that Gettysburg’s dead have conferred on them.
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By Abraham Lincoln
