USA HISTORY

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR(1861 1865)

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

[SOURCES]
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

(A) People are coming to meet us here.

(B) ** We are standing on an important battlefield of that war.

(C) People are coming to fight with us here.

EXPLANATIONS BELOW

Concept note-1: -We are met on a great battle-field of that war. 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.

Concept note-2: -The “unfinished work” to which Lincoln refers, “the great task remaining before us, ” is to put into practice the proposition to which this nation was and is dedicated: that all men are created equal. Miraculous though it was, the Constitution had left that work unfinished.

Concept note-3: -What is the main purpose of the Gettysburg Address? The main purpose of the Gettysburg Address at the time it was given was to commemorate a new National Cemetery at Gettysburg. It also gave Lincoln’s purpose for pushing on to win the Civil War-the abolition of slavery and the reunification of the Union.

Concept note-4: -Lincoln’s message in his Gettysburg Address was that the living can honor the wartime dead not with a speech, but rather by continuing to fight for the ideas they gave their lives for.