His moving speech offers heartfelt appreciation for those who left their families and the comforts of their homes for the sake of preserving the Union. Lincoln respectfully refrains from disparaging the secessionists. The President of the nation could do no less, considering that the main Union goal was to reunite North and South into one United States. Isolating or insulting the South would have been a dreadful political move for Lincoln. Unfortunately, the President did not live long enough to forge meaningful alliances with his political enemies and Reconstruction failed miserably.
Ironically, Lincoln imagines a world that would forget the speech, saying: "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here." In fact, the first few lines or more of the Gettysburg Address is memorized by American school children well over a century after Lincoln spoke it in Pennsylvania. The speech remains relevant for several reasons. One,...
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