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How Lincoln Changed the World in Two Minutes | 5 Minute Video

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Why do Lincoln’s iconic words at Gettysburg still matter to each and every one of us? Professor Doug Douds of the Army War College explains.
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Script:

President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is one of the most famous speeches ever given. It is stunning in its brevity: ten sentences—272 words—and delivered in just over two minutes…few have said more with less.

Lincoln delivered the address on November 19, 1863. He was in Gettysburg to dedicate a national military cemetery to the Union soldiers who fell at the Battle of Gettysburg four months earlier. The North’s victory here was one of the pivotal battles of the American Civil War.

Lincoln begins this way: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Lincoln goes back in time—not to the signing of the Constitution, but to the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution, in forming our government, was the product of many compromises…most notably, slavery. In contrast, the Declaration of Independence declares our enduring national values. In one sentence, Lincoln summarizes the American project: liberty for all and equality of all.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Lincoln’s assertion is two-fold. First, the United States is unique. No nation was ever founded on a commitment to liberty and equality. And the Civil War was a trial to see if a nation based on such lofty ideals could survive.

“We are met on a great battlefield of that war.” Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the bloodiest battle of America’s bloodiest war. In three days of fighting, 51,000 Americans on both sides—Union and Confederate—were killed, wounded, captured, or missing.

“We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Lincoln is not in Gettysburg to celebrate the Union victory. Rather, he explains that those who fought were the loyal guardians of the American Experiment. With their blood, they watered the tree of liberty. As Lincoln himself knew, how could his words ever compare to that sacrifice?

He even speculates that, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

Ironically, the world remembers what our sixteenth president said, but do we remember the actions of those who fought at Gettysburg?

Lincoln answers that question with a challenge: “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…”

For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/how-lincoln-changed-world-two-minutes

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32 Comments

  7. The Gettysburg Address was the most dishonest and evil thing ever articulated by an American president. It basically asserts that the federal government has no constitutional restraints on killing anyone who does not consent to its supreme authority. Because equality. We were never actually dedicated to any such proposition. That was a lie to get around any actual constitutional restraints on his power.

  10. the founding fathers…wow…the constitution…the greatest words and guidelines man has ever put together…wow…the man who saved the constitution and the country…wow…for such a young country…to contribute so much to the world…wow…brings a tear to my heart for pride and love…we are so lucky to be here…love…love…

  13. "But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege."

    –H.L. Mencken

  14. Lincoln was espousing the Union's values, but I wonder how many noticed that when he speaks of the soldiers, he does not specify Union soldiers only, and therefore, the Confederate soldiers are included in the consecration.

  25. Abraham Lincoln was a TYRANT and a LIAR as he admitted he invaded Dixie for LAND and TAX REVENUE! AND WHY DID HE DO THIS? Because, in 1860, the States of the CSA (Dixie) was the 4th wealthiest country in the world.

    LOOK IT UP!
    Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President, five days after the evacuation of Ft Sumter: Lincoln's 19 April, 1861 Proclamation for Naval Blockades of Southern Ports:
    "Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and the laws of the United States for the COLLECTION OF THE REVENUE cannot be effectually executed therein comformably to that provision of the Constitution which requires DUTIES (TAXES) to be uniform throughout the United States:…"

    LOOK IT UP!
    The Confederate States of America (1861-1865) started with an agrarian-based economy that relied heavily on slave-worked plantations for the production of COTTON (search "cotton in the 1800s" for the massive wealth it created) for export to Europe If classed as an independent country, the area of the Confederate States would have ranked as the FOURTH-RICHEST country of the world in 1860." (Wikipedia: Economy of the Confederate States of America).

    LINCOLN UNCONSTITUTIONALLY GIVES HIMSELF WAR POWERS TO CONTROL DIXIE!
    From Princeton.edu
    Abraham Lincoln's "INVENTION" of Presidential War Powers: Facing the unprecedented crisis (which he allowed to happen) of civil war in 1861, President Lincoln invoked (?) his (self-invented) "war power" as commander-in-chief to "take any measure which may best subdue the enemy."
    Defying the chief justice of the United States, (and the Constitution) he suspended the writ of habeas corpus by presidential decree. He also declared martial law, authorized the trial of civilians by military courts, and proclaimed the emancipation of slaves–all on the grounds that "I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress."

  30. "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell in the chorus of the Union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."