Spiritualism of Lincoln\'s Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln

¶ … 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 spiritualism.

Lincoln began his address by stating "Four score and seven years ago." While he could have simply said "87 years," he purposely chose the biblical style of dating to transmit to the audience that this was to be a moralistic, spiritual, speech. 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," could continue to exist. These men died so that other could be free. And as he stated "It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this."

Lincoln then diverts into a spiritual explanation as to why the ground they were dedicating to the men who died there had already been consecrated by the sacrifice they had made. Their deaths, in the defense of freedom, was the act of consecration, and that he, and those who were dedicating the cemetery, had only "our poor power to add or detract" what those men had already accomplished. He went on to explain how those who have come afterward were not as important as those who had died; that the dedication ceremony and his speech were only the advertisement for the great accomplishment of the men being buried there. And that it was up to those who were alive, and still in the middle of the war, not to dedicate a cemetery, but to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work of those who had died there. Lincoln was calling on the nation to recognize the sacrifice that these men had made and to use that as the inspiration for an even greater effort to defeat the South and end slavery.

Lincoln then ended his speech by explaining, in no uncertain terms, that the war, which he had just asked the nation to dedicate itself to win, was being fought and must be won because to fail to do so would destroy the nation and make the sacrifice of those who died at Gettysburg in vain. What was at stake was not only the future of the country as a whole, but the whole future of freedom. The nation was at a crossroads, either it would move forward as a beacon of freedom for everyone, or it would be destroyed; and with it the chance of freedom around the world. The speech concluded with Lincoln's only reference to God in the entire speech, he stated "that we here highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. In a way Lincoln was equating the fighting of the Civil War to performing God's work, therefore the North was "just" in seeking to defeat the South and end slavery.