Lincoln's Gettysburg address is considered as one of the most influential speeches in the history of the United States of America. It occurred 4 and a half months after the Union defeated The Confederacy in the Civil War.
In this speech, Lincoln clearly makes a stance on his position regarding slavery, stating that the United States was a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.
Lincoln focuses on Pathos. A technique used to appeal to the peoples´ emotions. During his speech, he mentions all of the soldiers who died during the wars up until now and urges the people to honor them by pursuing the goal of a nation where all men are free, regardless of their origins.
Lincoln addresses his audience’s possible rejection of ideas by stating that “all men are created equal.” This speech was written for a cemetery dedication for the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. By saying that statement, he was addressing that some people still thought it was okay to have slaves, and the way each side of the war viewed the other. In Lincoln’s speech, he mostly uses pathos to tug at the emotions of the listeners. One example of Lincoln using pathos is: "The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” This phrase uses pathos because many people knew people who had been lost in the war. This caused the speech to give a point more to them, the people who had lost loved ones or friends, rather than the ones who had lost nothing at all.
