The Ultimate Guide to the Gettysburg Address

David Hirsch, Dan Van Haften

• Verlag: Savas Publishing
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781940669670
• Thema: History
• Thema: American Civil War History

Abraham Lincoln's November 19, 1863, Gettysburg Address is generally recognized as one of the greatest leadership speeches ever written. The Ultimate Guide to the Gettysburg Address explains the 272-word speech more thoroughly than any book previously published. With the aid of colorized step-by-step diagrams, the authors deconstruct the speech into its basic elements and demonstrate how the scientific method is basic to the structure of the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln's fascination with geometry is well documented. Authors David Hirsch and Dan Van Haften, however, are the first to discover and then demonstrate Lincoln's use of the six elements of a proposition and then diagram and explain how his in-depth study of geometry helped him compose the Gettysburg Address. The result is a deeper and richer understanding of the Gettysburg Address that was not previously possible. This concise color examination of one of our nation's most treasured and important speeches is perfect for all ages and especially for those interested in history, the use of language, and logic.

The Evidence

Abraham Lincoln had less than one year of formal education. Speaking in the third person in a short 1860 autobiography, presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln wrote:

After he was twentythree, and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar, imperfectly of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does. He studied and nearly mastered the Six‑books of Euclid, since he was a member of Congress.12

In 1849, Abraham Lincoln returned to Illinois after one two‑year term in Congress. He resolved to become a better speaker. Lincoln studied the first six books of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry to learn what it means to demonstrate. Euclid used the six elements of a proposition to prove theorems of plane geometry. The definitions of the six elements were preserved by Proclus, a fifth century philosopher who wrote commentary on Euclid’s Elements of Geometry.13

Abraham Lincoln’s writing from 1854 on is the best evidence of his structural writing technique.

The Gettysburg Address

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 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. But, i...