Topic > Rhetorical Analysis of the Gettysburg Address - 778

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 war and something to fight for. Before the speech, the Civil War was based solely on states' rights. Lincoln's speech encapsulates the essence of America and the ideals included in the Declaration of Independence by the founders. The sixteenth president of the United States was able to use his speech to turn a war for 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 about slavery, he was able to ensure that no foreign country would recognize the South as an independent nation, thus ensuring the Union's success in the war. In his speech, Lincoln used the rhetorical devices of juxtaposition, repetition, and parallelism. Lincoln had numerous purposes for his Gettysburg Address. First, it was to be used to dedicate the land where the Battle of Gettysburg had taken place as a cemetery for fallen Union troops, the most obvious and primary reason for his speech. The second purpose of his speech was to change the war on states' rights to a war on slavery and uphold the ideals that 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 skillfully uses the concept rhetorical devices of juxtaposition, parallelism, and repetition. Juxtaposition is the comparison of two......middle of paper......nation together. The ethos speech shows that when the Constitution was written the founding fathers were also divided, but they came together under one sheet of paper to unite one nation, similar to the Gettysburg Address. The Gettysburg Address was not successful when it was first presented to those who attended the dedication to the fallen of the Battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln surprised everyone present with his speech by its brevity. The address is considered the definition of the ideas on which the United States was founded. Before the start of the Civil War the United States was seen only as a collection of states. The Gettysburg Address was an attempt to unite the nation. Lincoln conveyed his belief that the nation must be united and that a “new birth of freedom” would be created, otherwise the nation would “perish from the world” if the Union failed.