Rhetorical Analysis of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Question 1
The Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863, was a turning point in the Civil War. The Union army defeated a Confederate army that had invaded the state of Pennsylvania. Over three days, a total of 150,000 troops participated in the battle; approximately 10,000 soldiers were killed or mortally wounded, 30,000 were injured, and 10,000 were captured or went missing. Four months later, 3,500 of the Union dead were interred in a new national cemetery near the battlefield. Writing on behalf of Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtin on November 2, 1863, David Wills invited President Abraham Lincoln to deliver a “few appropriate remarks” at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery on November 19. Only 272 words in length, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has become one of the most revered, memorable, and influential speeches in our nation’s history. Read the passage carefully. Write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Lincoln makes to convey his message.
In your response you should do the following: • Respond to the prompt with a thesis that analyzes the writer’s rhetorical choices. • Select and use evidence to support your line of reasoning. • Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning. • Demonstrate an understanding of the rhetorical situation. • Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.
Four-score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battle field 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 this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
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 here dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining 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 — that this nation, under God, 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.
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