Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, was a bigoted Calvinist, determined to cleanse his domain of Quakers, a new countercultural sect that ignored social rank and let men and women preach equally. The American struggle for religious liberty began even earlier. What was old news for Lincoln and his audience during the Civil War had already been old news even in the first days of independence. And yet, although America was “conceived in liberty” with the Declaration of Independence was written and signed - four score and seven years back from 1863 equals 1776 - and its “government of the people, by the people” comes from the Constitution, the pursuit of liberty with which Lincoln engaged is much older than either. But the intellectual power of the Gettysburg Address is deliberately borrowed from America’s founding documents. The style was Lincoln’s, with a little help from the King James Bible (“fourscore and seven years ago” echoes Psalm 90:10). What more is there to say about America’s most famous speech? Maybe this: that it was not meant to be unique. For the smoothness of its music, the gravity of its occasion and the conciseness of its 272 words, the Gettysburg Address occupies a unique position in American oratory. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa.
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