“The Gettysburg Address”

After the blood battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln dedicated the battleground as a military cemetery on November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (Lincoln 401). The speech he gave that day was one of the most famous of President Lincoln's addresses and almost every American child knows the opening line of "Four score and seven years ago..." (Lincoln 402). Lincoln, also known as the Great Emancipator, was against slavery, going as far as exercising his wartime Commander in Chief abilities to set the slaves free in the Union (Divine). Before he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln wanted to allow the African American freemen to be able to coexist with white men in the South with equality (Divine). Unfortunately, Lincoln never made an official Reconstruction plan, so his ideas never happened and blacks continued to have unequal rights and acts of cruelty and violence were still practiced on the black freemen (Divine).

Ralph Waldo Emerson made points in his writing that strongly agreed with Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address". Emerson wrote that "the Civil War the air was full of heroism" which is what the "Gettysburg Address" is literally about (Hawthorne) (Lincoln 402). When President Lincoln dedicated the military cemetery he commented on the "brave men, living and dead" and how they defined the struggle for freedom with their lives (Lincoln 402). Emerson disagreed with Lincoln on how to free the slaves. President Lincoln believed that the first step was emancipation and, affirming his belief that men are good and not cruel savages, Lincoln had faith that black people would be treated equal and after some time, have the same rights as American citizens just like the white men (Divine). Emerson made clear that "nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble, like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote." (Hawthorne). Emerson was not a fan of Lincoln's Emancipation as he did not think that that one speech and that one piece of legislature would solve any problems.

Henry David Thoreau had a "limited and distorted" view on slavery in the South, but was very vocal about his views on liberty and equality (Harding). In the "Gettysburg Address" Lincoln opens his address by reminding the audience that the nation was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the propostion that all men are created equal" (Lincoln 402). Lincoln and Thoreau both agreed on liberty for everyone, but unfortunately Lincoln did not live to see it happen and Thoreau never took action to back up his words.



Divine, Robert A., T. H. Breen, George M. Fredrickson, R. Hal Williams, H. W. Brands, and Ariela J. Gross. America Past and Present AP Edition. Boston: Longman, 2011. Print.

Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 05 Feb. 2012.

Hawthorne, Julian. "Emerson as an American." In The Genius and Character of Emerson. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1885. Quoted as "Emerson as an American." in Bloom, Harold, ed. The American Dream, Bloom's Literary Themes. New York: Chelsea Publishing House, 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 08 Feb. 2012.

Lincoln, Abraham. "The Gettysburg Address." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 400-402. Print.