Well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize, this is inspired exegesis of some of the most inspirational words in American history. It should be required reading for every citizen who casts a ballot.

25 of 30 found the following review helpful:

272: Number of Words That Redefined America  Jan 24, 2001
By Al Kader
The 272 of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address are as significant today as they were six score and seventeen years ago. Garry Wills' explicates them and paints a picture that gives us the historical context of the President's speech. It was short enough for generations of people to remember, yet at the same time, long enough to have a great impact on the ways we think of America. Wills argues that through his speech Lincoln remade the American history in that Americans would interpret the Civil War, and the Constitution, through the kaleidoscope of the Declaration of Independence. It is an extraordinary argument that, with just two hundred seventy-two words, Lincoln changed the American history and forever altered the ways we interpret the American Revolution. With a rhetorical approach, Wills - like Lincoln - persuades his readers, through evidence and interpretation, to be convinced that at Gettysburg, Lincoln "revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely."

Wills begins with a vivid description of the consequence of the three-day battle in early July 1863 that resulted in fifty thousand casualties. While Wills mentions that Edward Everett was the star of the ceremony in dedicating the Gettysburg, Lincoln - through a casual invitation - decided to make an appearance there. The casual invitation did not intend to offend the President, nor did he get offended. Of course, this was no accident. For Lincoln, Wills reasons, it was an opportunity. It was his chance to recuperate the political fences and elucidate the goals of the Civil War.

Wills persuasively points out that contrary to the popular myth that Lincoln wrote his speech on his way to Gettysburg on the train, Lincoln was a scholarly man and has always performed his work with shrewdness. The President did not do anything inadvertently and thus, "it is impossible to imagine him leaving his speech at Gettysburg to the last moment."

It is an intriguing matter that just when the readers think that Wills has delivered them with everything there is to know about the Gettysburg Address, the author merely begins to examine the national treasure for historical and cultural context. He argues that Lincoln's address "is made compact and compelling by its ability to draw on so many sources of verbal energy." Among these sources was classical rhetoric. The author illustrates the different ways both Everett and Lincoln used rhetoric to persuade their audience. He compares Lincoln's speech, especially, to Athenian funeral prose which often began with a praise for the dead, and closed with an advice for those who are alive. Lincoln modeled his speech on them to articulate his thoughts to his audience.

Wills entertains his readers by compelling them to be fascinated by Lincoln's use of language. In fact, he goes as far as dedicating an entire chapter to the revolution of the prose style in America that he argues is among the accomplishments of the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was fond of experimenting with words and their usage, and he spent a great deal of his time doing so. Using the changes the President made himself to his First Inaugural speech - that was prepared for him by William Seward - as his evidence, Wills explains that Lincoln acquired a rhythmic pace that made his sentences smooth and coherent. Ultimately, Lincoln embraced the ideals of rhetoric and used them efficiently to make his speeches more powerful.

The author goes a step further and provides his readers with an analysis of the Gettysburg Address. He records that the speech is outstanding and abstract. Unlike Everett's speech, where he provides details after details of the Civil War, Lincoln avoids them in his address. The President did not mention Gettysburg- the battlefield, or the Union- the defender of the Constitution, or the South- the runaway rebel that had just been captured; nor did he mention anything about slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the future of the freed slaves. This was no accident at all. President Lincoln avoided mentioning these issues in his speech because, for one thing, they were the most controversial issues of the time. He did so, according to Wills, to look "beyond the wars to `the great task remaining before us' as a nation trying to live up to the vision in which it was conceived." Lincoln wanted to put the war behind and move on to build a nation as foreseen by the forefathers of the republic. The Gettysburg Address focused more on the pivotal ideas for the nation and found a connection to the Declaration of Independence.

Throughout his book, Wills shows his readers that there exist a relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. According to Wills, Lincoln often referred to the Declaration of Independence when he argued that it was inconsistent to think that the American people could believe that all men had the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness but deny the very rights to black slaves. Lincoln was determined to not let this happen; and so, the Civil War was fought. Eloquently, Wills pens that Lincoln was able to remake America in his Gettysburg Address because he had spent a great deal of time relating the most sensitive issues of the era to the Declaration of Independence.

Lincoln, as Wills writes, viewed the Declaration of Independence as the basis of the American nation. Thus, it is deeply embedded within the Gettysburg Address. The pivotal argument of Wills writing is that in the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln turned the attention of the nation of nations, the United States of America, towards its founding document, the Declaration of Independence. The President, with only two hundred seventy-two words, remade America on the most important principle of this sacred document - that all men are created equal.

10 of 11 found the following review helpful:

How Lincoln made the Declaration of Independence Matter  Oct 19, 2000
By Lawrance M. Bernabo
Each Fourth of July somewhere in this country, people try to get signatures on a petition that lists grievances against the government. Most people refuse to sign but there are those who recognize the words of the Declaration of Independence and gladly sign their names. Of course, once you get through the famous opening declaration, most Americans would not know the specific charges leveled by Jefferson and the Continental Congress against King George III. But Garry Willis' study of "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America" examines the 272 word speech that made the opening words of the Declaration part of the American consciousness. Prior to November of 1863 most Americans did not accept the principle that "all men are created equal." After Lincoln finished his speech at Gettysburg, the nation's commitment to that ideal was signed in the blood of the Civil War dead.

At 266 pages (plus notes and index) Willis' book is as concise as Lincoln's speech. Most of the analysis deals with the origins of the speech, looking at both its classical antecedents and the specific rhetorical situation of the dedication ceremony for the cemetery on the field at Gettysburg. But Willis also deals with how Lincoln's words have resonated from that time forward. The greatest speech in American history remains Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream," but without the Gettysburg Address the time of the Civil Rights movement and the place of the Lincoln Memorial, wherein Lincoln's speech is carved, would never have come about.

For teachers of either American history or rhetoric, this book contains much more than you would ever need to know and much more than you could ever impart to your students. But the importance of this speech is made crystal clear and that is what our students need to know, to understand, and to remember.

See all 65 customer reviews on Amazon.com