By far the greatest speech in all of America history is the Gettysburg address. This speech was given by President Abraham Lincoln when consecrating the graveyard over which 176 soldiers had died in the civil war. The speech was given on the 19th of November 1863, to the people assembled in the graveyard. This was four and a half months after the union armies had triumphed over the Confederacy in the Battle of Gettysburg. In the speech, the president outlined the principles of human equality that are underlined in the Declaration of Independence, and reiterated that the Civil War was a struggle meant to preserve the unity of the Union. Before the President delivered his speech, Edward Everett, considered one of the greatest orators of his time, had just delivered a two and a half hour speech (Ryan, 2004). The aim of this essay is to analyze Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address taking into account the rhetoric used in the address and the purpose it serves in communicating the intended message to the audience. …show more content…
By using “four scores and seven years ago”, he sets a tone that if familiar to all the people on the grounds. As a strong Christian nation, he knew that the people would not dispute anything related to the bible. They would take it as the gospel truth. He also referred to the “Declaration of Independence” which was another document that the people believed in (Harris, 2013). By doing this, he set in the people’s mind that his speech was to speak the truth. Lincoln then makes the ultimate contrast when he states that “those who here gave their lives that this nation might live”. He makes a contrast between life and death. In this case, he was giving hope to the nation that though soldiers had died in the battle, they had made the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the nation and that the nation would live on because of