Four and a half months after the Union defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. He gave the Union soldiers a new perspective on the war and a reason to fight in the civil war. Before the speech, the Civil War was based on states' rights. Lincoln's speech encapsulates the essence of America and the ideals that were instilled in the Declaration of Independence by the Founders. The sixteenth president of the United States was able to use his speech to turn the war on states' rights into a war on slavery and to uphold the principles on which America was founded. By turning the Civil War into a war against slavery, he effortlessly ensured that no foreign country would recognize the South as an independent nation, ensuring the Union's success in the war. In his speech, Lincoln used the rhetorical devices of juxtaposition, repetition, and parallelism to touch the hearts of his listeners. Lincoln had numerous purposes for the Gettysburg Address. First, it was to be used to dedicate the land where the Battle of Gettysburg had taken place as a cemetery for the fallen troops of both the North and the South, the most obvious and central motif of his speech. The second purpose of his speech was to turn the war on states' rights into a war on slavery and uphold the ideals the Founders had created in the Declaration of Independence. In this way, Lincoln was able to manipulate countries, such as England and France, that had disliked slavery for decades into detesting the Confederacy and ensuring that other nations did not recognize the Confederacy as a nation. Lincoln intelligently uses rhetorical devices of juxtaposition, parallelism, a... medium of paper... United States." Lincoln conveyed his belief that the nation must be united and that a "new birth of freedom" would be created. , otherwise the nation would have “perished from the world” if the Union had failed. Abraham Lincoln wrote one of the greatest speeches in American history known as the Gettysburg Address. It was not only used as a dedication to the fallen troops of the North and South, but as a speech to give the Union a reason to fight and attempt to unite the divided nation. The way the sixteenth president handled his Gettysburg Address demonstrated how effective juxtaposition, repetition, and parallelism can be. bring unity to a nation deeply divided over beliefs. His speech touched the hearts of many and indirectly ended the Civil War Lincoln may have been considered a tyrant at the time, but he was a great leader of a nation,. of a war and a democracy.