thesis statement about battle of gettysburg

A Summary and Analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Here’s a question for you. Who was the main speaker at the event which became known as the Gettysburg Address? If you answered ‘Abraham Lincoln’, this post is for you. For the facts of what took place on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated Confederate forces in the Battle of Gettysburg, have become shrouded in myth. And one of the most famous speeches in all of American history was not exactly a resounding success when it was first spoken.

What was the Gettysburg Address?

The Gettysburg Address is the name given to a short speech (of just 268 words) that the US President Abraham Lincoln delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery (which is now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery) in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on 19 November 1863. At the time, the American Civil War was still raging, and the Battle of Gettysburg had been the bloodiest battle in the war, with an estimated 23,000 casualties.

Gettysburg Address: summary

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.

The opening words to the Gettysburg Address are now well-known. President Abraham Lincoln begins by harking back ‘four score and seven years’ – that is, eighty-seven years – to the year 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed and the nation known as the United States was founded.

The Declaration of Independence opens with the words: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’. Lincoln refers to these words in the opening sentence of his declaration.

However, when he uses the words, he is including all Americans – male and female (he uses ‘men’ here, but ‘man’, as the old quip has it, embraces ‘woman’) – including African slaves, whose liberty is at issue in the war. The Union side wanted to abolish slavery and free the slaves, whereas the Confederates, largely in the south of the US, wanted to retain slavery.

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.

Lincoln immediately moves to throw emphasis on the sacrifice made by all of the fallen soldiers who gave their lives at Gettysburg, and at other battles during the Civil War. He reminds his listeners that the United States is still a relatively young country, not even a century old yet.

Will it endure when it is already at war with itself? Can all Americans be convinced that every single one of them, including its current slaves, deserves what the Declaration of Independence calls ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’?

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this 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.

Lincoln begins the third and final paragraph of the Gettysburg Address with a slight rhetorical flourish: the so-called rule of three, which entails listing three things in succession. Here, he uses three verbs which are roughly synonymous with each other – ‘dedicate’, ‘consecrate’, ‘hallow’ – in order to drive home the sacrifice the dead soldiers have made. It is not for Lincoln and the survivors to declare this ground hallowed: the soldiers who bled for their cause have done that through the highest sacrifice it is possible to make.

Note that this is the fourth time Lincoln has used the verb ‘dedicate’ in this short speech: ‘and dedicated to the proposition …’; ‘any nation so conceived and so dedicated …’; ‘We have come to dedicate a portion …’; ‘we can not dedicate …’. He will go on to repeat the word twice more before the end of his address.

Repetition is another key rhetorical device used in persuasive writing, and Lincoln’s speech uses a great deal of repetition like this.

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 us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that 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 concludes his address by urging his listeners to keep up the fight, so that the men who have died in battles such as the Battle of Gettysburg will not have given their lives in vain to a lost cause. He ends with a now-famous phrase (‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’) which evokes the principle of democracy , whereby nations are governed by elected officials and everyone has a say in who runs the country.

Gettysburg Address: analysis

The mythical aura surrounding the Gettysburg Address, like many iconic moments in American history, tends to obscure some of the more surprising facts from us. For example, on the day Lincoln delivered his famous address, he was not the top billing: the main speaker at Gettysburg on 19 November 1863 was not Abraham Lincoln but Edward Everett .

Everett gave a long – many would say overlong – speech, which lasted two hours . Everett’s speech was packed full of literary and historical allusions which were, one feels, there to remind his listeners how learned Everett was. When he’d finished, his exhausted audience of some 15,000 people waited for their President to address them.

Lincoln’s speech is just 268 words long, because he was intended just to wrap things up with a few concluding remarks. His speech lasted perhaps two minutes, contrasted with Everett’s two hours.

Afterwards, Lincoln remarked that he had ‘failed’ in his duty to deliver a memorable speech, and some contemporary newspaper reports echoed this judgment, with the Chicago Times summarising it as a few ‘silly, flat and dishwatery utterances’ before hinting that Lincoln’s speech was an embarrassment, especially coming from so high an office as the President of the United States.

But in time, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would come to be regarded as one of the great historic American speeches. This is partly because Lincoln eschewed the high-flown allusions and wordy style of most political orators of the nineteenth century.

Instead, he wanted to address people directly and simply, in plain language that would be immediately accessible and comprehensible to everyone. There is something democratic , in the broadest sense, about Lincoln’s choice of plain-spoken words and to-the-point sentences. He wanted everyone, regardless of their education or intellect, to be able to understand his words.

In writing and delivering a speech using such matter-of-fact language, Lincoln was being authentic and true to his roots. He may have been attempting to remind his listeners that he belonged to the frontier rather than to the East, the world of Washington and New York and Massachusetts.

There are several written versions of the Gettysburg Address in existence. However, the one which is viewed as the most authentic, and the most frequently reproduced, is the one known as the Bliss Copy . It is this version which is found on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It is named after Colonel Alexander Bliss, the stepson of historian George Bancroft.

Bancroft asked Lincoln for a copy to use as a fundraiser for soldiers, but because Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, the speech was illegible and could not be reprinted, so Lincoln made another copy at Bliss’s request. This is the last known copy of the speech which Lincoln himself wrote out, and the only one signed and dated by him, so this is why it is widely regarded as the most authentic.

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Significance of the Battle of Gettysburg

5 Reasons the Battle Mattered

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The importance of the Battle of Gettysburg of the United States' Civil War was evident at the time of the colossal three-day clash across hills and fields in rural Pennsylvania in early July 1863. Dispatches telegraphed to newspapers indicated how enormous and profound the battle had been.

Over time, the battle seemed to increase in importance. And from our perspective, it's possible to see the clash of two enormous armies as one of the most meaningful events in American history.

These five reasons why Gettysburg mattered provide a basic understanding of the battle and why it occupies a pivotal place not only in the Civil War but in the entire history of the United States.

Gettysburg Was the Turning Point of the War

The Battle of Gettysburg fought on July 1–3, 1863, was the turning point of the Civil War for one main reason: Robert E. Lee's plan to invade the North and force an immediate end to the war failed.

What Lee (1807–1870) hoped to do was cross the Potomac River from Virginia, pass through the border state of Maryland, and begin waging an offensive war on Union soil, in Pennsylvania. After gathering food and much-needed clothing in the prosperous region of southern Pennsylvania, Lee could threaten cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania or Baltimore, Maryland. If the proper circumstances had presented themselves, Lee's army could even seize the greatest prize of all, Washington, D.C.

Had the plan succeeded to its greatest extent, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia might have surrounded, or even conquered, the nation’s capital. The federal government could have been disabled, and high government officials, including even President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), might have been captured.

The United States would have been forced to accept peace with the Confederate States of America. The existence of a pro-slavery nation in North America would have been made permanent—at least for a while.

The collision of two great armies at Gettysburg put an end to that audacious plan. After three days of intense fighting, Lee was forced to withdraw and lead his badly battered army back through western Maryland and into Virginia.

No major Confederate invasions of the North would be mounted after that point. The war would continue for nearly more two years, but after Gettysburg, it would be fought on southern ground.

The Location of the Battle Was Significant, Though Accidental

Against the advice of his superiors, including the president of the C.S.A.,  Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), Robert E. Lee chose to invade the North in the early summer of 1863. After scoring some victories against the Union’s Army of the Potomac that spring, Lee felt he had a chance to open a new phase in the war.

Lee’s forces began marching in Virginia on June 3, 1863, and by late June elements of the Army of Northern Virginia were scattered, in various concentrations, across southern Pennsylvania. The towns of Carlisle and York in Pennsylvania received visits from Confederate soldiers, and northern newspapers were filled with confused stories of raids for horses, clothing, shoes, and food.

At the end of June the Confederates received reports that the Union's Army of the Potomac was on the march to intercept them. Lee ordered his troops to concentrate in the region near Cashtown and Gettysburg.

The little town of Gettysburg possessed no military significance. But a number of roads converged there. On the map, the town resembled the hub of a wheel. On June 30, 1863, advance cavalry elements of the Union Army began arriving at Gettysburg, and 7,000 Confederates were sent to investigate.

The following day the battle began in a place neither Lee nor his Union counterpart, General George Meade (1815–1872), would have chosen on purpose. It was almost as if the roads just happened to bring their armies to that point on the map.

The Battle Was Enormous

Minnesota Historical Society / Getty Images 

The clash at Gettysburg was enormous by any standards, and a total of 170,000 Confederate and Union soldiers came together around a town that normally held 2,400 residents.

The total of Union troops was about 95,000, the Confederates about 75,000.

The total casualties for the three days of fighting would be approximately 25,000 for the Union and 28,000 for the Confederates.

Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought in North America. Some observers likened it to an American  Waterloo .

Heroism and Drama at Gettysburg Became Legendary

The Battle of Gettysburg actually consisted of a number of distinct engagements, several of which could have stood alone as major battles. Two of the most significant would be the assault by Confederates at  Little Round Top  on the second day, and  Pickett’s Charge  on the third day.

Countless human dramas took place, and legendary acts of heroism included:

• Col. Joshua Chamberlain (1828–1914) and the 20th Maine holding Little Round Top
• Union officers including Col. Strong Vincent and Col. Patrick O’Rorke who died defending Little Round Top.
• The thousands of Confederates who marched across a mile of open ground under heavy fire during Pickett’s Charge.
• Heroic cavalry charges led by a young cavalry officer who had just been promoted to general,  George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876).

The heroism of Gettysburg resonated to the present era. A campaign to award the Medal of Honor to a Union hero at Gettysburg, Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing (1814–1863), culminated 151 years after the battle. In November 2014, at a ceremony at the White House, President Barack Obama awarded the belated honor to distant relatives of Lieutenant Cushing at the White House.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Underscored the War's Significance

Ed Vebell / Getty Images 

Gettysburg could never have been forgotten. But its place in American memory was enhanced when President Abraham Lincoln visited the site of the battle four months later, in November 1863.

Lincoln had been invited to attend the dedication of a new cemetery to hold the Union dead from the battle. Presidents at that time did not often have a chance to make widely publicized speeches. And Lincoln took the opportunity to give a speech which would provide a justification for the war.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address  would become known as one of the best speeches ever delivered. The  text of the speech  is short yet brilliant, and in less than 300 words it expressed the nation’s dedication to the cause of the war.

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Topic: Battle of Gettysburg Thesis Statement: The battle of Gettysburg was a major turning point of the Civil War. It turned the tide of the war from the South to the North, pushing back Lee’s army that would never fight again on Northern soil and bringing confidence to the Union army.

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How the Battle of Gettysburg Turned the Tide of the Civil War

By: Sarah Pruitt

Published: July 1, 2019

In the first days of July 1863, two great armies converged at the small town of Gettysburg, in southern Pennsylvania. Begun as a skirmish between Union cavalry and Confederate infantry scouting for supplies, the battle escalated into one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War .

The Union’s eventual victory in the Battle of Gettysburg would give the North a major morale boost and put a definitive end to Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s bold plan to invade the North. Widely viewed as a key turning point in the war, the battle would take on even more importance later that year, when President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to dedicate the battlefield’s cemetery.

Lee’s 'Invincible' Army

By June of 1863, having just led his Army of Northern Virginia to a stunning victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville , Lee was riding high. From this position of strength, he convinced Confederate leaders to approve a bold strategy of invading Pennsylvania, hoping to deal the Yankees a crushing defeat on their home turf.

“Lee says more than once that he believes his men would be invincible,” explains Jennifer Murray, a history professor at Oklahoma State University and the author of On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013 . A successful invasion of Union territory, the Confederate general hoped, would convince Northerners to abandon their support for Lincoln’s war effort in droves.

Accidental Meeting at Gettysburg

On June 28, with Lee’s army on the move in Pennsylvania, Lincoln removed Joseph Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac, replacing him with George G. Meade . This marked the third change of command seen by the Army of the Potomac in 1863.

“The Union soldiers are confident in themselves,” Murray says. “But they're a little more questionable about their leadership, and about this string of commanders coming in again and again.”

Along with the news of the command change, Lee soon learned that the Union troops were closer than he expected them to be. “[Lee’s] cavalry, led by J.E.B. Stuart, is out sort of joy riding, and not doing a really good job of bringing intelligence over to Lee,” Murray points out. Abandoning his plan to drive deeper into Pennsylvania, toward Harrisburg, Lee ordered his army to concentrate at Cashtown, a tiny town located about eight miles west of Gettysburg.

With nearly a dozen roads leading into and out of town, Gettysburg was a key destination for moving troops. On June 30, a few Confederate divisions headed there in search of shoes and other supplies, and encountered two brigades of Union cavalry.

Facts About the Battle

Though the bulk of the Army of the Potomac was still in Maryland, fulfilling Lincoln’s orders to stay between Washington and the rebel army, the cavalry units were scouting ahead to find out intel about the enemy position. After initially pulling back to Cashtown, the Confederate soldiers decided to go back to Gettysburg the next day (July 1) and get the supplies they needed, even if it meant confronting the Union troops.

“The first shot of the battle is fired a little bit after 7:00 in the morning,” Murray says. “Neither Meade nor Lee look to Gettysburg on a map and say, we're going to fight there. It begins as an accident, and then it escalates.”

The first day of fighting appeared to be another Confederate victory, as the rebels drove their Yankee counterparts into retreat through the town of Gettysburg. But Union troops still held the high ground south of town, on Cemetery Ridge, which would prove crucial in the days to come.

On July 2, Lee sought to press his advantage, launching massive assaults on both sides of the Union line. The hesitance of his subordinate generals allowed more Union reinforcements to arrive, strengthening their defensive positions and enabling them to stall the rebel onslaught. With over 20,000 casualties, the second day at Gettysburg would stand as one of the war’s bloodiest days of fighting.

Lee tried again on July 3, believing his “invincible” army could triumph with just one more push. But the attack, by fewer than 15,000 Confederate soldiers led by George Pickett , was a “catastrophic failure,” says Murray, with nearly 5,600 rebel soldiers killed, wounded or captured. The following day, Lee began preparations to move his army south, with Meade in pursuit. Ultimately, with the Confederates dug in along the Potomac, Meade decided against an attack, giving Lee’s forces time to cross the river back into Virginia (and earning Lincoln’s ire).

How Many Died and the Impact of Gettysburg

Casualties were high on both sides at Gettysburg, but the Confederates undoubtedly suffered more lasting damage. In all, some 28,000 Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded or missing, comprising one-third of Lee’s entire army, and including several of Lee’s trusted subordinates. Though the Confederate general would go on to other military victories south of the Mason-Dixon line, he would never again lead an invasion of the North.

On the other hand, Gettysburg reinvigorated the Union war effort, especially when combined with Ulysses S. Grant’s near-simultaneous capture of Vicksburg in the war’s western theater.

“Three days after the battle, the headline of the Philadelphia Enquirer reads ‘Waterloo Eclipsed,’” says Murray. “Just days after it ended, Philadelphians and Northerners are thinking of the Battle of Gettysburg as comparable to the battle that defeated Napoleon and completely reshaped the geopolitical situation of western Europe.”

For Union troops, stopping Lee’s invasion, and defeating rebel troops on northern soil, provided a much-needed surge in morale that would sustain them into the next grueling phase of war.

The Gettysburg Address

But the clash took on even more significance in November 1863, when President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address . In one famously brief speech, Lincoln consecrated the battlefield, honored the sacrifice of the soldiers who died there and redefined the war as a struggle not just for the Union, but for the nation.

As Lincoln said, “...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that 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.”

HISTORY Vault: Gettysburg

This special strips away the romanticized veneer of the Civil War to tell the story of the soldiers on frontlines.

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a short story answering these questions Topic: Battle of Gettysburg...

a short story answering these questions

Topic: Battle of Gettysburg

Research Questions:

1. What were the key factors that contributed to the Union's victory at the Battle of Gettysburg?

2. How did the Battle of Gettysburg impact the outcome of the American Civil War?

3. How has the Battle of Gettysburg been remembered and memorialized in American history?

Thesis Statement: 

The Union's victory at the Battle of Gettysburg was due to a combination of superior military strategy and strong leadership, and this pivotal battle played a crucial role in the outcome of the American Civil War.

Answer & Explanation

The Battle of Gettysburg took place around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a small crossroads town in southern Pennsylvania about 8 miles north of the Maryland border. It is the center hub of a network of roads feeding in from all angles of the compass. Gettysburg was also the end of a railroad line from Hanover, but it had been wrecked by Confederate troops. Gettysburg's road network and its position on the east side of the mountains were important factors in why the battle was fought there. So was the terrain, which included good defensive ground such as Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, and Cemetery Hill.

Union victory. Gettysburg ended Confederate general Robert E. Lee's ambitious second quest to invade the North and bring the Civil War to a swift end. The loss there dashed the hopes of the Confederate States of America to become an independent nation.

President Lincoln uses the dedication ceremony at the Gettysburg's Soldiers' National Cemetery to honor the fallen and reassert the purpose of the war in his historic Gettysburg Address: The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

The Battle of Gettysburg  was fought July 1-3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. In the battle, Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the North. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point due to the Union's decisive victory and concurrence with the Siege of Vicksburg.

After his success at Chancellorsville in Virginia in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion of the North—the Gettysburg Campaign. With his army in high spirits, Lee intended to shift the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged northern Virginia and hoped to influence Northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war by penetrating as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia. Prodded by President Abraham Lincoln, Major General Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved of command just three days before the battle and replaced by Meade.

Elements of the two armies initially collided at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there, his objective being to engage the Union army and destroy it. Low ridges to the northwest of town were defended initially by a Union cavalry division under Brigadier General John Buford, and soon reinforced with two corps of Union infantry. However, two large Confederate corps assaulted them from the northwest and north, collapsing the hastily developed Union lines, sending the defenders retreating through the streets of the town to the hills just to the south. On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard. On the Union right, Confederate demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders held their lines.

On the third day of battle, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by 12,500 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, known as Pickett's Charge. The charge was repelled by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great loss to the Confederate army. [15]  Lee led his army on a torturous retreat back to Virginia. Between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle, the most costly in US history. On November 19, President Lincoln used the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery to honor the fallen Union soldiers and redefine the purpose of the war in his historic Gettysburg Address.  

Approach to solving the question: critical thinking

Detailed explanation: explained above

Key references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg

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