1. THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS Abraham Lincoln’s Speech Redefining the Civil War, November 19 th, 1863

2. “Four score and seven years ago…” 87 The opening line of the Gettysburg Address is a classic in oratory. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” may be the only other opening line as well known. The expression is just a number. A score is twenty. Four score, then, is eighty. Four score and seven in eighty-seven years. Lincoln didn’t use this expression for any particular reason, it was just the conventional way to count years in the 19 th Century.

3. Four score and seven years ago was 1776. Lincoln was invoking the year 1776 because that was the year Americans declared independence from England. This is important simply because Lincoln wants his audience to consider the original goals of our nation: than man would be allowed liberty, and that democratic processes would be used to guarantee equality for all. We fought against England to avoid tyranny and subjugation, and the Civil War had a similar purpose in his mind.

4. The Declaration of Independence In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Lincoln may never have anticipated that this very short speech would someday be held up as a corollary – or a coda – which amplifies the original intent of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln may have thought of the speech as a memorial; however, this was a speech to redefine the purpose of the Union.

5. To Dedicate Gettysburg National Cemetery Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was a city of just about five thousand people. During the battle in July of 1863, there were over 50,000 casualties. This was far more than the tiny hamlet was equipped to provide nursing for – even the most basic triage services. Over 7,000 dead soldiers – more dead than alive in Gettysburg – must be buried. Lincoln came to dedicate the portion of the National Cemetery where the Union dead – not the Confederates – would be buried.

6. Lincoln on his own speech: “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. 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 was not even the keynote speaker at this event. That honor went to the famed orator Edward Everett.

7. Nothing less than democracy was at stake. “It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” - Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 19, 1863

8. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address 1. The democratic government of the United States of America must be preserved. Lincoln had often articulated the notion that secession was a process which might repeat infinitely – until anarchy set in. So, preserving democratic government was one goal. 2. The second goal was more beautifully stated. Lincoln claimed that there must be “a new birth of freedom.” This statement, just a few months after his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, was a clear reference to the liberty of the formerly enslaved.