flumpool 凡人譜 × Mayday 五月天 - 證明

Gettysburg Address – Lincoln’s rhetoric and Utopia

When we talk about the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln’s iconic beard or the famous line “government of the people, by the people, for the people” spontaneously enters our mind. Hardly anyone knows that before Lincoln gave his miniature speech, Edward Everett, a renowned orator at the time, delivered his funeral oration which lasted for more than two hours at the ceremony. We cannot help but ask ourselves:

“What are the peculiarities that make Lincoln’s 272-word speech everlasting in the mind of people like being engraved in a memorial, while Everett’s oration is transient like footprints on the sand?”

        This essay explores Lincoln’s speech with the aim of answering the above question.