The Gettysburg Address

It proposes that all Union soldiers have a common ancestor.

It establishes a shared concern between speaker and audience.

It challenges traditional American notions of individualism.

It encourages naysayers to join his position.

It demonstrates his first-hand experience with the issue at hand.

dispassionate and clinical

conciliatory and forgiving

reverent and humble

aloof and condescending

decisive and indignant

"Fourscore 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."

"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."

"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 dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."

emphasize the paradox of willingly going to one's death.

compare the actions of these soldiers to those from Classical antiquity.

describe the tragic loss of men who died for no discernible result.

connect the lives of soldiers to the bigger life of the nation.

question the need for violence as a method of conflict resolution.

He develops an analogy between the virtues of the dead soldiers to the characteristics of a great democracy.

He employs a series of dashes to imply that the country will remain forever fragmented.

He provides a list of problems that can only be solved through faith and devotion to God.

He directly addresses the audience to suggest that a unified country needs a strong and decisive leader.

He emphasizes the amount of effort required to unify the country through the repetition of clauses beginning with "that."

a commemoration that gives way to criticism.

a case for how the past can influence the future.

an outline of causes that seem to be true of all human conflict.

a lamentation on the perils of building a new nation.

an illustration of the interplay between memory and experience.

To introduce the idea of war.

To remind the audience that they are all part of the same nation.

To give a sense of the passage of time and compare the birth of the nation with the present day.

To give the audience a sense of urgency.

To remind the audience of who he is and why he has the authority to speak.

the passage of time.

the Founding Fathers.

childbirth.

the American Revolution.

the Fourth of July.