You do not really know the Gettysburg Address

 

 

 

 

 

 

A blog post by David Murray at Writing Boots on October 31, 2024 titled You Don’t Know the Gettysburg Address begins:

“The Gettysburg Address was not a ceremonial speech, inevitably bound for a marble wall. It was a strategy speech, designed to ‘convince a very skeptical public in the north that they should keep dying’ despite their doubts about a cause ‘that they didn’t particularly believe in,’ says legendary University of Chicago writing professor Larry McEnerney.”

 

There is a YouTube video of professor Larry McEnerney’s excellent lecture at the World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association titled The Gettysburg Address, as You’ve Never Considered It Before. It is an hour and fifteen minutes long – and well worth watching for learning about that great speech. If you can’t spare all that time right now, I suggest you watch the last fifteen minutes which I have bookmarked here.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 35 minutes he talks about Lincoln’s use of coherence as shown above – going more specific: continent, nation, battlefield, portion, resting place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At an hour and eight minutes he discusses how dedicate yourself (the call to action) solves three problems.

 

The plaque of the address text came from here at Wikimedia Commons.