Lincoln was not particularly known as a religious president. The spiritual nature of his language comes forward when he directly invokes biblical phrasing, biblical biblical language. For those people sitting in pews all across america, they would hear this language and indeed it would, in a way, spiritually lift them.
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.