USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In 1863, the task was to save the Union from a bloody and seemingly unending war. In 272 words, Lincoln gave purpose and meaning to the strife; he offered solace to a suffering nation and laid out a powerful vision of a future United States which could emerge from the conflict under a new birth of freedom.

Detailed explanation-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.

Detailed explanation-3: -Lincoln described the Civil War as a struggle for “a new birth of freedom"–his vision for a nation that provides equality for all of its citizens, creates a unified nation no longer dominated by states’ rights, and defines democracy in terms of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Detailed explanation-4: -In it, he invoked the principles of human equality contained in the Declaration of Independence and connected the sacrifices of the Civil War with the desire for “a new birth of freedom, ” as well as the all-important preservation of the Union created in 1776 and its ideal of self-government.