The speech was capable of being read in two very different ways. It's possible to read that in my dear you tell me ame, and think that he is talking to all americans at the time. The true application of the text as a doctrine really does come in the twentieth cet,. putting it on the lincoln memorial is the legacy that he did allow us to survive.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, ten sentences long, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg after the Union forces had won an important battle with the Confederates. Opening with " Four score and seven years ago," it became one of the most influential statements of national purpose, asserting that America was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and "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." Among those inspired were Martin Luther King Jr whose "I have a dream" speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial 100 years later, echoed Lincoln's opening words.
With
Catherine Clinton
Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas and International Professor at Queen's University, Belfast
Susan-Mary Grant
Professor of American History at Newcastle University
And
Tim Lockley
Professor of American History at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson.