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.

  

A.    Brief overview

The Gettysburg Address was delivered by President Abraham Lincoln in the ceremony at Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The ceremony was held on November 19, 1863 as a dedication to the soldiers who had sacrificed their lives in the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. It is vital for us to note that the Civil War ended only in 1865, i.e. a year and a half after the Gettysburg Address.

        Some may easily get the impression that Lincoln’s speech is so popular even after almost 150 years due to the use of language that is simple and understandable to the proletariat, as they think that the words in the Address are of Anglo-Saxon origin. However, as Wills points out, they may have failed to realize that keywords in the speech, e.g. “dedicate” and “consecrate”, are indeed of Latin origin (1992).

        Some may claim that Lincoln’s style of writing is the use of simple sentences. However, they may have failed to notice that the last sentence of the speech is a long and complex one, with a subordinate clause that is made up of four sub-clauses arranged in a parallel manner.

        We will have an in-depth discussion on Lincoln’s language and style by examining the Gettysburg Address in the following sections.

B.    Lincoln’s use of rhetorical devices

Many scholars highly regard the Gettysburg Address as “a prose poem” (Highet, 1959). One plausible reason is that Lincoln’s speech is satiated with rhetorical devices; and the extensive use of figure of speech is widely observed in the language of poetry. The beginning of the third paragraph is an exemplar of this writing style of Lincoln in the Address, and the figure of speech in it is scrutinized and summarized below.

-        Anaphora:      Sentence 6 is constructed by repeating thrice the phrase “we can not” successively at the beginning of divisions of the sentence:

“we can not dedicate— we can not consecrate— we can not hallow”                                                                               [Italics added]

This repetition makes the sentence rhythmic, creating a sense of harmony.

-        Asyndeton:     It is the deliberate omission of conjunction between a series of related clauses (Corbett, 1965). The connective “and” between the clauses “we can not consecrate” and “we can not hallow” is omitted in sentence 6. Corbett notes that a hurried rhythm is established in the sentence via asyndeton.

                The great Greek philosopher Aristotle in his book Rhetoric praises that the use of repetition, together with asyndeton, is particularly effective in spoken speeches, as it generates a dramatic effect:

“Thus strings of unconnected words, and constant repetitions of words and phrases, are very properly condemned in written speeches: but not in spoken speeches – speakers use them freely, for they have a dramatic effect.”
   (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book III, Chapter 12; trans. W. R. Roberts)

-        Climax:  In sentence 6, three verbs “dedicate”, “consecrate” and “hallow” are used, and are arranged in an order of ascending strength. All the three verbs share similar meaning, which is to devote to sacredness; but with a difference in tone or intensity. “Dedicate” is the weakest as it only involves devotion to sacred rites, while “hallow” the strongest as it refers to the act of purifying or making something holy (OED).

       In Rhetoric, Aristotle also hints at the effect of climax:

“In this repetition there must be variety of tone, paving the way, as it were, to dramatic effect; e.g. ‘This is the villain among you who deceived you, who cheated you, who meant to betray you completely.’” [Italics added]  (Book III, Chapter 12)

In other words, climax is an important tool, usually used along with word or phrase repetition, that helps the speaker to achieve a dramatic effect by varying the tone. In this case, the speaker uses this tone-rising technique, together with the connective “but” and the phrase “in a larger sense”, to divert the interlocutors’ attention gradually away from the ceremony or the battlefield itself to a topic of higher importance: the ideal of freedom for which the dead soldiers fought.

-        Antithesis:      This figure of speech refers to the juxtaposition of a contrast or opposition of thoughts and words (Swinton, 1887). It is particularly abundant in sentences 7 and 8:

	Contrasting pairs
Sentence 7	-              living vs. dead -              add vs. detract
Sentence 8	-              remember vs. forget -              say vs. did (do)

                        Table 1:  Examples of antithesis in sentences 7 and 8

       In sentence 7, the image of dead soldiers is clearer and more vivid with the antonym “living” if the original is compared to an alternative we constructed – “The brave dead men”. The opposing pair forms a sharp contrast, and creates a deeper and firmer impression on readers, just as Aristotle remarks, “antithesis impresses the new idea more firmly” (Rhetoric, Book III, Chapter 11).

C.    Lincoln’s Utopian aspiration

The focal point of most academic papers and books discussing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is solely on its rhetoric. Truly, Lincoln’s speech is crafted meticulously in the rhetorical point of view. However, the speech written by an orator as eloquent and skillful as Everett, whom his student Ralph Waldo Emerson praises his genius “almost comparable to that of Pericles in Athens”, is not devoid of rhetorical techniques.

        A pure rhetorical analysis would sound very much like a barbarous, faulty attempt at disengaging the soul of a person from his or her body, as French philosopher and essayist Michel de Montaigue says, “May we not say that there is nothing in us... that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously break up a man alive.” Therefore, to explain fully the overwhelming success of Lincoln’s speech, other essential aspects regarding the speech content and organization should also be integrated into the rhetorical analysis.

-       The use of metaphor and its overall effect:            One of the main themes of Gettysburg Address is liberty and freedom, and the speech is wreathed in metaphors of birth and rebirth by Lincoln:

Example	Sentence 1:  fathers brought forth a new nation; conceived in Liberty	Sentence 10:  rebirth of freedom
Source domain	Birth	Rebirth
Target domain	A beginning	A new hopeful spiritual renewal

Table 2:   Metaphors of birth and rebirth

        While reading sentence 1, it is hard for us to imagine how a man can “bring forth” or give birth to a baby. A.E. Elmore speculates that the “fathers” to whom Lincoln refers is the Heavenly Fathers (2009). But, the word is not capitalized and its meaning is restricted by the predicate, which refers strictly to the signing of the Declaration of Independence by their earthly predecessors. Booth even mentions it has been absurdly proposed that the “fathers” are obstetricians (1998). Nevertheless, these interpretations actually demonstrate the existence of birth and rebirth metaphors, as well as their effects on the readers. Under these conceptual metaphors, the Civil War is perceived by many as a ritual of purification that America goes through, with spiritual rebirth of freedom as its destiny (e.g. White Jr. (2009)).

        The effect of these metaphors is three-fold: (1) echoing the last paragraph with the first paragraph; (2) helping readers to familiarize with the ideas of liberty and freedom as the idea of birth is more concrete, and the idea of born again or spiritual rebirth is at the heart of Christianity, e.g. in the Holy Bible Jesus says, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” [Italics added] (King James Version, John 3:3); and (3) bringing aspiration to people as spiritual rebirth and the new beginning of freedom has a close linkage of hopeful renewal, which makes the metaphor of rebirth feasible.

-       The use of allusion and its overall effect:       Although the clause “government of the people, by the people, for the people” in sentence 10 is best known to be a Lincoln’s phrase, Lincoln does not invent it. Its authentic origin has been fiercely debated. Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon gives us some hope of settling the dispute, through recalling in his book Herndon's Life of Lincoln that Lincoln lends Theodore Parker’s lecture “The Effect of Slavery on the American People” from him, and the lines “Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people” are marked with pencil (1889). Hence, it is most probable that Lincoln likes the phrase of Theodore Parker, and later adopts it seamlessly into his speech as a concluding remark.

        Another renowned allusion is in the first paragraph: “all men are created equal”. It is taken directly from the Declaration of Independence signed in 1776. The two cases of allusion mentioned not only link up the first and last paragraphs together, but also attribute solemn meaning to the sacrifices of the soldiers, and most importantly invoke the long-forgotten concepts of equality and freedom in the mind of audience.

        Not everyone loves Lincoln’s speech. Some criticisms from anti-war Democrats appeared in newspapers after the Gettysburg ceremony, castigating that the speech sounded too much like the Declaration of Independence rather than a dedicatory remark to the soldiers. On the contrary, Everett’s speech was praised by Republican editors for his accurate description of the battle (Reid, 1967).

        But, it is important to offer people some glimpse of hope and aspiration, considering that the Address was delivered at the gloomy and desperate time when the Civil War was still under way and a pungent smell of sulfur was still lingering in the air. This is actually what Lincoln does with his short speech via allusion and leaving out the details of the battle of Gettysburg – “transforming the ugly reality into something rich” (Wills, 1992).

        Aspiration is indispensible to the success of public speaking. The majority of the most memorable speeches in history are the ones that inspire us most, for example “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King, “I Am the First Accused” by Nelson Mandela, and “Yes We Can” by Barack Obama. They often emphasize the universal humanistic ideals, like equality, freedom and democracy, which the audience yearns for perpetually and resonates with emotionally. And the speeches infused with hope and optimism naturally elicit positive emotion among audience. A number of experiments conducted by cognitive psychologists proved that items with strong emotional effects are more memorable, probably because they are processed more actively by the audience, when compared with neutral items (Kensinger and Corkin, 2003).

        It is true that the ideas of human equality and a democratic government presented by these two allusions in Lincoln’s speech look merely like Utopia, especially during the time when the funding of the two major political parties in the United States is largely contributed by big corporations and conglomerates, and when universal suffrage in Hong Kong is nothing more than a mirage. But Oscar Wilde reminds all of us the importance of being aspired: “a map of world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at”.

D.    Conclusion

To sum up, Lincoln engraves his speech at Gettysburg with rhetorical tools in hand, and with aspiration in mind. Therefore, his speech is well protected against the eroding tides of time. This masterpiece of speech shall always be a Utopian ideal which gives light to the people in the past, people in the present, people in the future.

References:

“dedicate, v.”. OED Online. September 2012. Oxford University Press. 23 November 2012.

“hallow, v.1”. OED Online. September 2012. Oxford University Press. 23 November 2012.

Aristotle. Rhetoric (W. R. Roberts, Trans.). Book III. New York: Modern Library. 1954.

Booth, Stephen. “The Gettysburg Address”. Precious Nonsense. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. 52.

Corbett, Edward P.J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 434-35.

Elmore, A. E. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Echoes of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer. Southern Illinois University Press. 2009. 43.

Emerson, Ralph W. “Life and Letters in New England”. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vol. 10. Boston and New York: Houghton Mufflin, 1904. 331.

Herndon, William H. Herndon's Life of Lincoln. Wildside Press, 2008. 323.

Highet, Gilbert. "The Gettysburg Address”.  A Clerk of Oxenford: Essays on Literature and Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954.

John. The Holy Bible. King James Version ed. New York: American Bible Society, 1999. 

Kensinger, E. A., and Corkin S. "Memory Enhancement for Emotional Words: Are Emotional Words More Vividly Remembered than Neutral Words?" Memory and Cognition 31:8, 2003. 1169-180.

Montaigne, Michel de. “Upon Some Verses of Virgil” Essays of Montaigne (Charles Cotton, Trans.). Vol. 8, New York: Edwin C. Hill, 1910.

Reid, Ronald F. “Newspaper Response to the Gettysburg Addresses.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 53, Issue 1, 1967. 55-58.

Swinton, William. “Definitions.” Studies in English Literature. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887. xvii.

White Jr., Ronald C. “The Words That Moved a Nation”. Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State - Bureau of International Information Programs, 2009. 52-61.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism. Public Domain Books, 1997.

Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. 20, 170-75.