Question

In the opening sentence, Lincoln refers to the founding of the nation “fourscore and seven” - 87 - years earlier. Which of the following best explains Lincoln’s purpose in this opening? He was observing that the nation had strayed from its original ideals. He wanted to remind people about what the nation’s founding ideals were. He believed it was time to rethink what the Founding Founders had said.

Answer 1

Question: In the opening sentence, Lincoln refers to the founding of the nation “fourscore and seven” - 87 - years earlier. Which of the following best explains Lincoln’s purpose in this opening?

Options:

• He was observing that the nation had strayed from its original ideals.
• He wanted to remind people about what the nation’s founding ideals were.
• He believed it was time to rethink what the Founding Founders had said.

Answer: He wanted to remind people about what the nation’s founding ideals were.

Explanation:

According to Mr. Lincoln’s one-time law partner, William Herndon, Mr. Lincoln followed Theodore Parker’s ideas. Mr. Parker was a Unitarian minister and he promoted the purity of inner ideals and individualism over corrupted social customs and laws. His one-time law partner once said, ‘’the U.S. Constitution is a provisional compromise between the ideal political principle of the Declaration and the actual selfishness of the people North and South.”  

Mr. Abraham Lincoln didn’t say ‘’this took place 87 years before the 1863 gathering at Gettysburg, but he said “Fourscore and seven years ago” (a score being 20 years). By 1863, America had outlived a human life, and Mr. Lincoln had frequently called on his contemporaries to live up to the ideas of the past generation of American founders.