Gettysburg Address To Horace Greeley Analysis

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Upon review of the documents, it appears to me that Abraham Lincoln has many different political and personal views. Abraham Lincoln’s political viewpoints on slavery seem to be always changing. However, his feelings about the actual slaves and blacks living in America remained the same. Lincoln had always been opposed to the idea of slavery, calling it a “monstrous injustice.” He recognized slavery as a severe issue in our country, yet later on in his presidency felt it was essential to the southern way of life. Lincoln’s standpoints on the issues of slavery varied throughout the documents but his concern for the well-being of the slaves themselves was constant. In the end Lincoln wanted all men free. In the letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln writes of saving the Union, and not destroying or saving slavery. Lincoln states "If I…show more content…
Lincoln famously begins his speech with the words “four score and seven years ago.” This beginning is taking the nation back to the founding moment, to the revolution of 1776. The importance of 1776 is not just the event itself but also what the founders said those 87 years before. Lincoln, by focusing on the revolution, and more specifically the Declaration of Independence, is making an argument about what America stands for. In that same first sentence, he simply and directly states his case: “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” By highlighting these words from the Declaration of Independence, he is indirectly speaking to the issue of slavery, and in doing so is trying to expand the cause of the war from just saving the union to redefining the union, or, in Lincoln’s own words, giving the nation “a new birth of freedom.” This was a positive speech in which Lincoln hoped would bring the country together in the aftermath of a terrible and bloody

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