Gettysburg Address Thesis

President Abraham Lincoln gave his speech, the Gettysburg Address, on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a new cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The cemetery contained the soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. About five months earlier, the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest and most influential speech during the war, because it put forward the idea that "all men are created equal". (1) Lincoln honored the Union dead and gave a purpose to the soldier's sacrifice, when he states "from these honored dead we take increased devotion..."(2) He invoked the principle of human equality from the Declaration