The Gettysburg Letter by Abraham Lincoln

HSpeech responses

Tell about Winston Churchill, who was once asked how long it would take him write a speech of ten minutes. "About two weeks" he replied. really? And how long will it take him to prepare a one-hour speech? "Probably a week." So then, the questioner was confused, how long would it take to write a two-hour speech? "Such a speech", said Churchill, "can be delivered even now". 

What the great British rhetorician was trying to say is that the most difficult thing in a speech is to get to the point and express it precisely and sharply. By this standard, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is a brilliant rhetorical pinnacle. In less than five minutes, Lincoln managed to explain with the help of about 300 words the essence of democracy, freedom and equality. Along the way, he drowns out some tongue-in-cheek phrases that are used as a cliché to this day - for example "a government of the people, by the people, for the people"

historical background:

At the height of the Civil War, right after the bloody battle at Gettysburg, in which the Northern forces first succeeded in stopping the advance of the Southern army under the command of General Lee, Lincoln arrives to dedicate the cemetery to the thousands of martyrs of the battle.

Abraham Lincoln – The Gettysburg Address

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.