The Civil War has gone by a variety of different names throughout the years. One popular name in the postwar South was “The War Between the States.” Other names employed by Southerners include “The War for Southern Independence” and “The War of Separation”; in the North popular names included “The War for the Union” and “The War of the Rebellion.” The most common and lasting name, however, has always been “The Civil War,” the name used by Lincoln, Davis, Lee, and Grant during the war and by most Americans ever since.

This short, declarative sentence contains evocative visual imagery that powerfully conveys the magnitude of the Battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln’s use of a passive verb construction here also emphasizes the power of the place—Lincoln conveys that something brought them all to Gettysburg. Years later, Lincoln would use this notion of a divine plan, or fate, in his second inaugural address to portray the Civil War as an inevitable confrontation.

The United States was founded in 1776 on principles of democracy and freedom that were revolutionary for the time. Lincoln states that the Civil War is the first true test of whether or not a country founded on liberty and democracy is capable of surviving. His use of the word “conceived” emphasizes the singularity of the country’s origin and employs a birth metaphor that returns at the end of the speech.

The first hostilities in the American Civil War took place in April, 1861, with the Confederate army’s attack on the US Army base of Fort Sumter in South Carolina. When Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address two years later, the tide of the war was turning in favor of the Union. The Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee had recently lost the Battle of Gettysburg, ending their northern advance and forcing them to retreat.

One of Lincoln’s primary goals as president was to stop the spread of slavery. After the start of the Civil War, this approach quickly shifted towards the emancipation of the slaves, and Lincoln began taking steps to accomplish that goal by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Lincoln uses this line, taken from the Declaration of Independence, to evoke the founding principles of the country, namely equality and freedom. Given the context of Lincoln’s speech, this is also a clear reference to the Union’s desire to eradicate slavery.

Lincoln begins his speech by alluding to the founding of the United States and the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776—four score and seven, or eighty-seven, years ago. Lincoln draws on the nation’s history to use the ideas of the founders as a key element of his own speech. In doing so, Lincoln aligns the Northern cause with the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

In this address, Lincoln coined the phrase “of the people, by the people, for the people,” which has since entered the national lexicon as an elegant and concise definition of American democracy. Just as Lincoln began the speech with a reference to the Declaration of Independence, this final statement nods to the same founding document. The spirit of the declaration, with its insistence that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” can be heard echoing through the Gettysburg Address and, in particular, its stirring conclusion.

Five-known copies of the Gettysburg Address exist: the Nicolay draft, the Hay draft, the Everett copy, the Bancroft copy, and the Bliss copy. Each is named after the person to whom Lincoln sent the version. The Bliss copy (sent to Colonel Alexander Bliss) is the best known and is widely accepted as the standard because Lincoln signed and dated this version, and provided it with a title. It is also the version chosen for inscription at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

This passage reveals the threading together of two separate strands of repetition. The long final sentence of the speech is divided by em dashes, each of which proceeds a statement about “the great task remaining before us” beginning with the word “that.” In the final such statement, Lincoln embeds another piece of repetition—“of the people, by the people, for the people”—thus ending the speech on a rhythmically and rhetorically powerful note.

In the conclusion of the address, Lincoln emphasizes “a new birth of freedom,” reiterating the birth metaphor he introduced at the start of the speech. The implication is that through conflict, sacrifice, and even death, there is the possibility for a rebirth and renewal of the nation’s values—democracy, equality, and freedom. Lincoln’s use of sustained metaphor brings the important themes and ideas to the forefront again and again, an effective rhetorical strategy.

To do something “in vain” is to do it uselessly, without effect or purpose. The word derives from the Latin vanus, which means “empty” or “void.” Lincoln’s aim is to ensure that the Union dead did not die without meaning, and therefore to call on the living to fulfill the purpose of the dead.

Lincoln carefully transforms the deaths of the soldiers at Gettysburg into a call to action for his fellow citizens of the Union. Rather than viewing the battle as a tragedy, Lincoln attends to the greater cause and purpose for which the soldiers fought. In such a light, the proper way to honor the dead is to further the cause they died for.

In this passage, Lincoln conveys the idea that actions speak louder than words. As he puts it, the words used to consecrate the battlefield will fade in time, but the efforts of the soldiers will not. In a twist of irony, Lincoln’s words in this speech—“what we say here”—have been canonized for their eloquence, and thus will be long remembered, despite his predictions to the contrary. The construction of this statement is an example of antithesis, a technique which contrasts opposing ideas to emphasize a larger point.

One of Lincoln’s primary themes in the Gettysburg Address is the weakness of words compared to actions. Lincoln claims that the battlefield cannot be consecrated by an exchange of words; rather, it has already been consecrated by the deeds of the soldiers who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. One of the great ironies, both of this address and of Lincoln’s political career, is that Lincoln’s words are powerful, despite the claims he made otherwise throughout his life. The humility of his presentation is integral to his rhetorical power.

To “hallow” means to sanctify or purify a person, place, or object. The word derives from the Old Saxon “hêlagôn,” from which we also derive “holy.” Lincoln uses a series of related words—dedicate, consecrate, and hallow—in order to emphasize his point that the ground at Gettysburg has already been rendered sacred by the sacrifices of the fallen soldiers.

The verb “consecrate” means to designate a person, place, or thing as sacred, to dedicate it to a religious purpose. In many cases, the act of consecration grants a place—often a church or cemetery—a special legal status. The process of assigning events a religious purpose was familiar to Abraham Lincoln, who spoke eloquently of the divine purposes animating the Civil War in his Second Inaugural Address.

Throughout the Gettysburg address, Lincoln uses the literary device of anaphora—the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a series of statements. In this passage, Lincoln repeats “we can not” in order to drive home his point that Gettysburg has already been consecrated, by the dead rather than the living.