The Legend of the Speech
Abraham Lincoln’s dedicatory speech of the memorial cemetery at
Gettysburg “Gettysburg Address” has, like its author, achieved a kind of
apotheosis. The soldiers, about whom it was written and to whom the
memorial itself was dedicated, are virtually forgotten. Observers today
consider the Gettysburg Address the American political creed, a “prose
poem” of the triumph of freedom and equality. Delivered in 1863 during
the height of the Civil War, Lincoln’s dedicatory speech is only three
paragraphs long. Even today, schoolchildren often learn it by heart.
The content of this most rousing and triumphant of eulogies is bracingly
simple. Lincoln begins by reminding his audience of the Founding
Fathers’ conviction of the undeniable truth that all men are created
equal. This undeniable truth, he claims, provides the Union its
strength and assures it of victory in the present “struggle”. From
there he pivots, consoling the people of the Union and thanking them for
their loyalty, steadfastness, and great sacrifice in the cause of
preserving the Constitution against the rebellious South. Despite the
latter’s pretensions to “secession”, he offers an olive branch to the
thoroughly defeated confederates, promising reunification and
forgiveness for those prepared to free their slaves. Meditating in
fulsome detail upon the Union soldiers who had died, he praises both
their deeds in battle and their self-conscious dedication to the goal of
emancipating and enfranchising the African-Americans in bondage.
Closing with a flourish, he prophesies the inevitable victory of
constitutional government and democracy in America, portending hope for
harmonic relations between the races in a “new birth of freedom”. This
is the Gettysburg Address that court historians usually cherish as the
creed of our national political theology.
