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¶ … Spiritualism of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln was not know as a religious man, in fact he never joined a church in Washington D.C. during his entire time as President. But Abraham Lincoln was also a man who was well versed in the Bible and went on to developed a deep personal spirituality during his time as President. Not only did he suffer the personal loss of one of his own children, but he also suffered personally from the loss of thousands of soldiers who died in the war. After one of the most horrendous battles in the war, a battle in which the North was victorious over the invading forces of the South, Abraham Lincoln was invited to speak at the dedication ceremony for the cemetery where the casualties were buried. The site was the new Gettysburg National Cemetery, and on November 19th 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his now famous "Gettysburg Address," just ten sentences dedicating the cemetery to the men who had died for their nation. However, Lincoln's words were more than a simple dedication to the men who died, it was a spiritual explanation of the war and the reason's why it had to be fought.
Abraham Lincoln could be called a secularist, that is, a person who did not include religion in his daily life. But, because Lincoln was not a religious man, this did not mean that he did not have a Christian spiritualism in his daily life. Abraham Lincoln was a man of deep moral convictions, he had a deep sense of right and wrong, and while he may not have been an openly religious man, the words of the Gettysburg Address betray Lincoln's...
And went on the connect the spiritual side of the speech to the establishment of the United States. In a way he was connecting the morals of the bible to the creation of the country and "the proposition that all men are create equal." Therefore, the fact that all men are created equal is now equated to the moral teachings of the bible.
After this beginning, Lincoln dove into the reason why the speech needed to be given; the nation was in a Civil War, testing whether the nation itself could withstand it's founding principles. In other words, the Civil War was about freedom, the freedom of every single person in the country. This basic tenet of the Constitution was, in Lincoln's view, being broken by the institution of slavery. The war was to decide whether or not "all men were created equal" as the founding fathers stated.
The speech was delivered at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, just months after a horrific battle that saw the slaughter of thousands. Lincoln then went on to state why he was there; to dedicate the cemetery to the men "who gave their lives that that nation might live." He was dedicating the cemetery to the men who gave their lives so that the nation, which was "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,"…
references to the reasons for the many deaths, asking the nation to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work of those who died, and invoking the name of God. This was done in order to explain how the cause of the United States of America was a holy cause, dedicated to freedom; and that freedom was a holy thing. The nation that was conceived in liberty must dedicate itself to expanding that liberty to everyone, and that was the reason those men died. It was now up to the survivors to finish the work of saving the nation and bring freedom to all it's citizens. To do otherwise would amount to the destruction of the country and allowing those who made the ultimate sacrifice to have died in vain.
Gettysburg Address President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address encapsulates a major historical irony -- although Lincoln in his brief dedicatory speech claimed that "the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here," it is not hard to argue in 2013 that the Gettysburg Address has nevertheless become Lincoln's most noteworthy and memorable work. Indeed the Hollywood film "Lincoln" begins with the somewhat implausible scene of Union soldiers reciting the
His moving speech offers heartfelt appreciation for those who left their families and the comforts of their homes for the sake of preserving the Union. Lincoln respectfully refrains from disparaging the secessionists. The President of the nation could do no less, considering that the main Union goal was to reunite North and South into one United States. Isolating or insulting the South would have been a dreadful political move
Gettysburg Address Lincoln's Gettysburg Address The Burden of Leadership On November 19, 1863, approximately five months after the Civil War battle at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln spoke before a crowd of about 15,000 during the dedication ceremony for the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg (Holloway 54). His address followed a two hours speech by the noted speaker Edward Everett. By contrast, Gettysburg Address took only two minutes to complete. While the crowd's response
He stated, "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced" (Lincoln). Again, Lincoln is appealing to an aspect that is larger than the present. The ideals that Lincoln espouses are still
He said especially a nation conceived for the purposes of liberty cannot allow part of the people living in it to be enslaved to others living in that same nation. He said that the soldiers who had fought and died here struggled to preserve the ideal of liberty for every person. He said that their blood had been spilled because they had dedicated themselves to a cause in a
Gettysburg The Civil War was a battle that tore the United States into two dividing loyalties and families across the states. That it is a scar that still rankles the North and South cannot be doubted and yet, one event during the war is remembered over all others -- the Battle of Gettysburg. The battle took place for three days and yet, even today we see almost 1.3 million people visit