The Gettysburg Address

9 questions, answered

For the teacher

1. 1

   Which year does “Four score and seven years ago” point to, and what happened then?

   87 years before 1863 is 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence (adopted July 4, 1776), which Lincoln quotes: “all men are created equal”. Sources: [1, 10]

2. 2

   Why, according to the second paragraph, have the people come to Gettysburg?

   “to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live” (second paragraph). Sources: [1]

3. 3

   Lincoln says “we can not dedicate” the ground. Who, according to him, has already done so?

   “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract” (third paragraph). Sources: [1]

4. 4

   The address moves through three times: past, present and future. Find where each begins.

   Past: the founding, “Four score and seven years ago” (first paragraph). Present: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war” (second paragraph). Future: “the great task remaining before us” and what “shall not perish from the earth” (third paragraph). Sources: [1]

5. 5

   Count how often the words “here” and “dedicate” or “dedicated” occur. What does the repetition do?

   “here” occurs 8 times; “dedicate” twice and “dedicated” 4 times. The repetition ties the words to the place, and it turns the dedication from the ground to the living: the audience are asked to be “dedicated here to the unfinished work”. Sources: [1]

6. 6

   What does Lincoln ask the living to do in the last sentence?

   To take “increased devotion” to the cause the dead fought for; to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain”; that the nation “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”. Sources: [1]

7. 7

   “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here”: was Lincoln right?

   Not in the long run. At first newspapers judged the address along party lines, some mocking it and others praising it, and a generation passed before most Americans counted it among the greatest speeches in their history. Senator Charles Sumner later wrote that Lincoln “was mistaken”. Sources: [2, 5]

8. 8

   The draft kept by John Nicolay does not contain “under God”, and it sets “all men are created equal” in quotation marks. Why can copies of the same speech differ?

   Lincoln wrote five copies at different times, some before the speech and three after it for charity, and changed words between them. Nobody knows which copy he read from or exactly what he said on the day. Sources: [7, 2, 6]

9. 9

   Lincoln speaks of “a new birth of freedom” ten months after the Emancipation Proclamation. What did freedom mean for the millions then enslaved, and what was still to be done?

   Open discussion. Facts to bring in: the Proclamation freed the people enslaved in the rebelling states only, and its promise depended on Union victory; slavery was abolished nationwide by the Thirteenth Amendment, passed by the House on January 31, 1865. The text itself does not say what Lincoln meant. Sources: [11, 5]