Linda Przygodski - Abraham Lincoln. A Biography

It took only a few minutes to deliver, and it contained just 268 words. Compared with the time wasted and words carelessly bleated out by modern politicians and pundits, the Gettysburg Address is one heck of a bargain.

No speech better sums up Abraham Lincoln than the Gettysburg Address, and no telling of his story can begin without recounting it. Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, delivered these words on November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A few months early, a bloody, pivotal battle of the Civil War had been fought there, and Lincoln was on hand to dedicate the land to the fallen soldiers. The gaunt, 6-foot-4 man stepped in front of the crowd and delivered these words:

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.

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

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicatewe cannot consecratewe cannot hallowthis ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 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 usthat from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotionthat we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vainthat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln didnt think much of his speech when he gave it, believing it to be too short and that it didnt really capture the solemn moment as he had hoped. He even said, the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here. Instead, the short address completely reshaped the focus of the Civil War . The Unions war effort against the Confederacy to that point had been uneven, at best. Lincoln had the task of bringing the South back to the Union by force, and it wasnt going well.

Certainly the major victory at Gettysburg bolstered the hopes of the Union. But that was the North defending its own turf in Pennsylvania. Victories had to come in the South, where Confederates would fight to the death to defend their land and their way of life. Also, there was an election coming up in 1864 , and Lincoln was desperate to maintain his presidency. If he was voted out, the U.S. could have been spit it two forever, as the next man in office might not have seen the fight through. The population was already weary of this bloody war.

The Confederacy, though history shows it was wrong, was fighting with a purpose, with a clear goal. The genius of the Gettysburg Address was that Lincoln gave the North the same sense of purpose, an extra incentive to keep fighting. In January of 1863, Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation , declaring all the slaves were free. The Gettysburg Address took that idea and captured it, focused it, as never before. Not only was this war effort about preserving the union and freeing the slaves, it was also about the American way of life. It was about how the country was conceived and built, beginning with the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The country was about liberty and the idea that all men were created equal.

For the first time, the Union was fighting for a goal much the same way as during the Revolutionary War that helped create the country. Lincoln had finally found the way to match the intensity of the Confederacy, to match its sense of purpose. The Union already had greater resources and men. Now Lincoln had given it a heart.

If George Washington is the father of the United States, Abraham Lincoln is the savior who saved its life when it had faced certain death.

No U.S. president has faced the challenges that Lincoln faced from the first moment he took office. Certainly there have many other wartime presidents, but never one who was trying to lead the country when it was at war with itself.

Lincoln knew it would be a difficult road when he was campaigning for president. The secession of the South was not a foregone conclusion during the election of 1860, but it was a distinct possibility. The issue of slavery had been simmering for decades in the United States, and had finally come to a full boil in the summer of 1860. Lincoln, a self-educated prairie lawyer, had risen to fame in politics thanks to one term as a Congressman, elected in 1846.

After his two-year stint in the House, Lincoln returned to his law practice, but was never really left politics. Slavery had already been outlawed in much of the North, but was the backbone of the Southern economy and showed no signs of going away. At issue was the expansion of slavery. The United States was quickly growing, expanding into the Western territories.

In 1854, while running for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois, Lincoln officially voiced his full-throated opposition to slavery. His support for the Senate seat dwindled and he was not elected. But his speeches set the stage for the most famous series of political debates in U.S. history in 1858.

Running for Senate as a Republican against Democrat Stephen Douglas, the two men had a series of debates that drew clear lines between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery platforms. Lincoln argued that slavery went against the ideas the Founding Fathers intended when they created the country. Douglas argued it was up to the people in each new state to decide if they wanted to adopt slavery.

Lincoln ended up losing the Senate election in 1858, but the intensity and interest in the Lincoln-Douglas debates propelled him to the Republican nomination for president in 1860. He defeated Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas and Southern Democrat John Breckinridge to win the presidency on Nov. 6, 1860, despite the fact he was so hated in the South that he was not even on the ballot in 10 southern states.

Lincoln took office in March of 1861, and a little more than a month later, the Civil War began with the battle for Fort Sumter in South Carolina. It was the beginning of four long years of bloody hell, with Lincoln at the helm. He was re-elected to a second term in 1864. It ended in 1865, with Lincoln achieving his goals of preserving the Union and ending the institution of slavery.

And, soon after the Civil War ended, Lincoln became the first president to die at the hands of an assassin, when southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot him at Fords Theater. Lincolns presidency began bloody and ended with his death.

There wasnt much about Abraham Lincolns life that wasnt difficult and bordering on tragic. His life ended at the hands of an assassin, and began in a single-room log cabin in the tough backwoods of rural Kentucky.

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. It certainly was a modest beginning for the person who would grow up to save the United States of America. Lincolns early influence from his parents, Thomas and Nancy, would become obvious later in his life. A major staple in the lives of the Lincolns was the their Babtist Church which held morality in the highest regard. The church stood in firm opposition to slavery, an idea that clearly trickled down to young Abe.