Question

Gettysburg Address

what is the significance of it to American History? What is it so important about it?

Answer 1

Everett delivered his two-hour oration (from memory) on the Battle of Gettysburg and its significance on the morning of 19 November, and the orchestra played a hymn composed for the occasion by B.B. Français. Lincoln then climbed to the podium, addressing the audience of about 15,000. He spoke for less than two minutes and the whole speech was less than 275 words in length. Beginning with invoking the picture of the founding fathers and the new country, Lincoln articulated eloquently his conviction that the Civil War was the ultimate test of whether the Union formed in 1776 would endure, or whether it would 'perish from the earth.

The dead at Gettysburg had set out their lives for this respectable purpose, he stated, and it was dependent upon the living to go up against the "extraordinary undertaking" before them: guaranteeing that "legislature of the individuals, by the individuals, for the individuals, will not die from the earth." The fundamental subjects and even a portion of the language of the Gettysburg Address were not new; Lincoln himself, in his July 1861 message to Congress, had alluded to the United States as "a vote based system an administration of the individuals, by similar individuals." The extreme part of the discourse, in any case, started with Lincoln's affirmation that the Declaration of Independence–and not the Constitution–was the genuine articulation of the establishing fathers' aims for their new country

By insisting that freedom was not merely the purview of dreamy idealists, but could be secured by one's own efforts, won on the battlefield, and protected by a unified nation committed to preserving it, Lincoln sought to transform America. By redefining democracy and nationalism by basically fusing them together, Lincoln not only encouraged the North to continue the war, he changed our way of thinking about our country forever.