FREE ESSAY ON 272: NUMBER OF WORDS THAT REDEFINED AMERICA

272: NUMBER OF WORDS THAT REDEFINED AMERICA

The two hundred seventy-two words of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address are as
significant today as they were six score and seventeen years ago. Garry Wills' Lincoln at
Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, explicates these two hundred seventy-two words
and paints a new picture that gives us the historical context of the President's speech.
It was short enough for generations of people to remember, yet at the same time, long
enough to have a great impact on the ways we think of this great republic. Wills argues
that through his speech Lincoln remade the American history in that Americans would
interpret the Civil War, and the Constitution, through the kaleidoscope of the
Declaration of Independence. 
It is an extraordinary argument that, with just two hundred seventy-two words, Lincoln
changed the American history and forever altered the ways we interpret the American
Revolution. With a rhetorical approach, Wills - like Lincoln - persuades his readers,
through evidence and interpretation, to be convinced that at Gettysburg, Lincoln
"revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change
their future indefinitely."
Wills begins with a vivid description of the consequence of the three-day battle in early
July 1863 that resulted in fifty thousand casualties. Many of the dead corpses of the
soldiers were not properly buried. In some places, where the soil was too soft, animals
began to dig out the bodies. In fact, arrangements had to be made to re-bury the bodies.
Seventeen acres of land were set aside for a new cemetery and Edward Everett was invited
to dedicate it. 
While Everett was the star of the ceremony, Lincoln - through a casual invitation -
decided to make an appearance in Gettysburg. The casual invitation did not intend to
offend the President, and nor did he get offended. Of course, this was no accident. For
Lincoln, Wills reasons, it was an opportunity. It was his chance to recuperate the
political fences and elucidate the goals of the Civil War. 
Unlike the popular myth, that Lincoln jotted down his speech on the back of an envelope
on his way to Gettysburg, Wills persuasively points out that Lincoln could not have done
such a thing. His evidence is that Lincoln was a scholarly man and has always performed
his work with shrewdness. The President did not do anything inadvertently and thus, "it
is impossible to imagine him leaving his speech at Gettysburg to the last moment." Thus,
the argument that Lincoln actually wrote the speech in the train on his way to Gettysburg
is as apocalyptic as the argument that George Washington actually cut down a cherry tree
and told the truth to his father.
It is an intriguing matter that just when the readers think that Wills has delivered them
with everything there is to know about the Gettysburg Address, the author merely begins
to examine the national treasure for historical and cultural context. He argues that
Lincoln's address "is made compact and compelling by its ability to draw on so many
sources of verbal energy." Among these sources was classical rhetoric. The author
illustrates the different ways both Everett and Lincoln used rhetoric to persuade their
audience. He compares Lincoln's speech, especially, to Athenian funeral prose which often
began with a praise for the dead, and closed with an advice for those who are alive.
Lincoln modeled his speech on them to articulate his thoughts to his audience. 
Wills entertains his readers by compelling them to be fascinated by Lincoln's use of
language. In fact, he goes as far as dedicating an entire chapter to the revolution of
the prose style in America that he argues is among the accomplishments of the Gettysburg
Address. Lincoln was fond of experimenting with words and their usage, and he spent a
great deal of his time doing so. Using the changes the President made himself to his
First Inaugural speech - that was prepared for him by William Seward - as his evidence,
Wills explains that Lincoln acquired a rhythmic pace that made his sentences smooth and
coherent. Ultimately, Lincoln embraced the ideals of rhetoric and used them efficiently
to make his speeches more powerful. 
The author goes a step further and provides his readers with an analysis of the
Gettysburg Address. He records that the speech is outstanding and abstract. Unlike
Everett's speech, where he provides details after details of the Civil War, Lincoln
avoids them in his address. The President did not mention Gettysburg- the battlefield, or
the Union- the defender of the Constitution, or the South- the runaway rebel that had
just been captured; nor did he mention anything about slavery, the Emancipation
Proclamation, or the future of the freed slaves. This was no accident at all. President
Lincoln avoided mentioning these issues in his speech because, for one thing, they were
the most controversial issues of the time. He did so, according to Wills, to look "beyond
the wars to 'the great task remaining before us' as a nation trying to live up to the
vision in which it was conceived." Lincoln wanted to put the war behind and move on to
build a nation as foreseen by the forefathers of the republic. The Gettysburg Address
focused more on the pivotal ideas for the nation and found a connection to the
Declaration of Independence.
Throughout his book, Wills shows his readers that there exist a relationship between the
Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. According to Wills, Lincoln often
referred to the Declaration of Independence when he argued that it was inconsistent to
think that the American people could believe that all men had the rights of life,
liberty, and pursuit of happiness but deny the very rights to black slaves. Lincoln was
determined to not let this happen; and so, the Civil War was fought. Eloquently, Wills
pens that Lincoln was able to remake America in his Gettysburg Address because he had
spent a great deal of time relating the most sensitive issues of the era to the
Declaration of Independence.
Lincoln, as Wills writes, viewed the Declaration of Independence as the basis of the
American nation. Thus, it is deeply embedded within the Gettysburg Address. The pivotal
argument of Wills writing is that in the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln turned the
attention of the nation of nations, the United States of America, towards its founding
document, the Declaration of Independence. The President, with only two hundred
seventy-two words, remade America on the most important principle of this sacred document
- that all men are created equal. 
Bibliography
Wills, Garry - Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America