When Abraham Lincoln stood before a crowd of thousands on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, no one knew what those 271 words of his two-minute speech would come to exemplify.  A careful observer, and one who had known the heartache of terrible loss, President Lincoln understood only too well what the myriad graves, about 3,500 Union dead, in the new National Cemetery had cost the nation.  In his eloquent speech, Lincoln was able to convey succinctly what was in his heart, that of the broken nation.

Here, line by line, is The Gettysburg Address, and what Lincoln meant to portray:

Fourscore and seven years ago….

Abraham Lincoln could have said eighty-seven years ago, since that was how many years had transpired between 1776 and 1863, but he decided upon a more poetic usage to convey how young our nation was.  Having been raised on the Bible since childhood, and an aficionado of Shakespeare and the poets, Lincoln was setting the stage to let his listeners know that, as plain-spoken as he was, this nation deserved a more exalted heritage.

Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

As with most symbolic writing, the personification of an object or event heightens the awareness of what is conveyed.  Here, Lincoln personifies this nation of the people by comparing its inception by conception, and later birth, and by giving it fathers – our Founding Fathers.  He makes this august group of men – now often demonized – as those giving a birthright – a scriptural reference.  He makes the birth of our nation personal, and that its life affects our lives.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure….

Bringing us abruptly to the awful present, Lincoln brings plainness to his speech, and all of its terrible reality.  Death is present, not just the death of the participants, but the possible end of this great experiment in personal liberty, our nation.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

Again, the awful reality of why the crowd had gathered is made clear.  They were at Gettysburg to dedicate a portion of the battlefield for the nation’s first national cemetery.  So many had been slain at Gettysburg that the sheer volume of dead, combined with the intense summer heat had made it impossible to identify the myriad dead and take them home.  It did not seem right to just leave them where they fell, or place them in hastily made mass graves.  Hence, the national cemetery came to be, and Lincoln wanted to make clear that the soldiers buried in that new cemetery had died so that the nation, and the liberty it promised, might still exist.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Lincoln explains that the dedication of this first national cemetery was the right thing to do.  It was what the survivors had to do.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

Rising above the sad reality, Lincoln brings back the deeper meaning into the minds of the listeners.  The action of consecration – which means to make holy – isn’t done by the participants of the ceremony.  It is done by those who gave the ultimate sacrifice at Gettysburg, and they had done it for us, the generations of Americans who stood there on Cemetery Hill, as well as those who were not yet born.  There is something deeply spiritual about Gettysburg, and many who visit here can feel it.  Lincoln, too, grasped that truth and succinctly vocalized it in his address.  It is also noteworthy that Lincoln honored both sides of those who fell at Gettysburg.  He knew all along that to end a civil war, both sides, all combatants had to be respected.  He wanted the people of the South to come back.  It is actually miraculous that Lincoln’s wish was realized.  Most civil wars last for centuries, because the rancor and hatred and “us versus them” are passed to the ensuing generations.  Lincoln did not want that to happen.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Well, Lincoln was wrong here.  The world has remembered for over a century and a half what he said at the cemetery dedication in 1863.  Yet, he makes another, correct, prediction: that the cost of Gettysburg, and the courage of those engaged, will never be forgotten.

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.

The President begins his crucial point and the beginning of the rest of his address.  The slain had already finished their work.  The living now had to be as critically engaged; they had to take up the banner. 

It is rather for us to be here, dedicated to the great task before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.  That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain….

Lincoln now drives home his point, that we must find the strength to be as devoted as they were, that we have to determine – he uses the word “resolve”, an equally active verb that reflects both mindset and motivation – to finish the work, to keep the nation alive.  His words reached the masses, and galvanized the Union to continue the fight.  One can only imagine the destitution in the hearts of the people of the wounded and broken country, as just about everyone lost someone, or knew someone, who was lost at Gettysburg.  Even as he spoke, the stench of death pervaded Gettysburg, the horse carcasses were being burned, and people became ill from the toxic miasma that pervaded the town.  Not all the graves had been filled.  With winter on the horizon, burials had to resume the following spring.  And the war went on, seeming to have no end in sight.  The great task was indeed multi-faceted.

…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…

Like all great speeches and ideas, Lincoln circled back to the beginning of his address: the nation, the one conceived in liberty, was now on the verge of extinction.  Yet, there was the possibility of a new birth of freedom.  Renewal was there if we would only take it.

… and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The United States of America, at that time, was the great experiment.  No other nation at that time had a government where the people governed themselves.  Kings, dictators, and autocrats were watching.  The population of the world was watching.  Were the nation to dissolve, then it proved to the world that the idea of a country that gave equality to the masses was ludicrous.  Other nations, including Great Britain and France, were working for the Confederacy under the table – never openly declaring an alliance (they could not truly accept a government that used the right to slavery in its hastily constructed constitution) – yet surreptitiously sent weaponry, money, and supplies to keep the war going.  A destroyed and divided nation would be open for invasion – and Europe was ready to go back in and declare territory for their governments.  In his carefully worded speech, Lincoln was letting those foreign powers know that they needed to back off.  With General Grant taking the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi shortly after the Union victory at Gettysburg, the Mississippi River belonged to the North, and Europe’s attempt to send supplies through the Gulf of Mexico slowed considerably.

A search of the history of other republics in the Americas and the rest of the world shows that, after our nation survived the Civil War, soon other countries clamored for independence.  From Canada through Central and South America, most nations on this side of the Atlantic became republics not long afterward.

There was more than one reason for Lincoln’s inspired speech.  The 271 words (it is 272 if we place the word “and” in the second to last phrase) are short and precise, and offer the idea of government of the people to the entire world.  Lincoln had perceived it.  He knew liberty and self-government belong to the world, not just to the United States.

It is true that many journalists ridiculed Lincoln’s speech: The London Times read: “The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln.”   The Harrisburg Patriot & Union penned: “We pass over the silly remarks of the President.”  The Chicago Times published: “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-watery utterance of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.”  But other newspapers printed complimentary remarks.  The thousands who attended the cemetery dedication were also moved and appreciative.  One listener remembered: “With a hot sun beating down on the immense throng packed together, it was rather long we perhaps all felt.  But when Lincoln rose such a silence fell that we almost forgot to breathe.  How he stood before us, gaunt, rugged, great.”  Another said: “Thousands who would not read the elaborate oration of Mr. Everett will read the President’s few words and not many will do it without moistening of the eye and swelling of the heart.”¹

The Gettysburg Address has passed the test of time, and is one of the greatest speeches ever uttered by a President.  Those who lead our nation today would do well to copy Lincoln’s short, concise and inspirational manner of getting an idea – especially an essential one – across to the people.

As we walk “the great battlefield of that war”, no matter where our citizenship lies, it is clear that The Gettysburg Address is a timeless work.  It’s simple, it’s beautiful, and it’s true.

And we still have a great task remaining before us. 

1.  Quotes are from The Blumhaven Digest, "What They Said About Lincoln's Gettysburg Address", October, 1960.