272 Number of Words That Redefined America

A detailed Summary of 272 Number of Words That Redefined America

The two hundred seventy-two words of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address are as significant today as they were six score and seventeen years ago. Garry Wills' "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America," explicates these two hundred seventy-two words and paints a new picture that gives us the historical context of the President's speech. It was short enough for generations of people to remember, yet at the same time, long enough to have a great impact on the ways we think of this great republic. Wills argues that through his speech Lincoln remade the American history in that Americans would interpret the Civil War, and the Constitution, through the kaleidoscope of the Declaration of Independence.

It is an extraordinary argument that, with just two hundred seventy-two words, Lincoln changed the American history and forever altered the ways we interpret the American Revolution. With a rhetorical approach, Wills - like Lincoln - persuades his readers, through evidence and interpretation, to be convinced that at Gettysburg, Lincoln "revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely."

Wills begins with a vivid description of the consequence of the three-d

It is an intriguing matter that just when the readers think that Wills has delivered them with everything there is to know about the Gettysburg Address, the author merely begins to examine the national treasure for historical and cultural context. He argues that Lincoln's address "is made compact and compelling by its ability to draw on so many sources of verbal energy." Among these sources was classical rhetoric. The author illustrates the different ways both Everett and Lincoln used rhetoric to persuade their audience. He compares Lincoln's speech, especially, to Athenian funeral prose which often began with a praise for the dead, and closed with an advice for those who are alive. Lincoln modeled his speech on them to articulate his thoughts to his audience.

The author goes a step further and provides his readers with an analysis of the Gettysburg Address. He records that the speech is outstanding and abstract. Unlike Everett's speech, where he provides details after details of the Civil War, Lincoln avoids them in his address. The President did not mention Gettysburg- the battlefield, or the Union- the defender of the Constitution, or the South- the runaway rebel that had just been captured; nor did he mention anything about slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the future of the freed slaves. This was no accident at all. President Lincoln avoided mentioning these issues in his speech because, for one thing, they were the most controversial issues of the time. He did so, according to Wills, to look "beyond the wars to 'the great task remaining before us' as a nation trying to live up to the vision in which it was conc

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Approximate Word count = 1104
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History