Blog #2 - The Gettysburg Address

At the time, the Gettysburg Address did not seem to be as important or successful as it is now, at least according to Lincoln it seemed sort of like a failure of a speech. Senator Charles Sumner even stated that Lincoln had said to him, "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.(Lincoln). Little did Abraham Lincoln know that one day this would be one of his most famous speeches. As I read this speech, I picked out some things that I believe Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson had in common. One of the things that I noticed was that first of all, they were both very much against slavery. That was not the only thing though, as Emerson grew up, he gradually gained a reputation of being a thinker and a speaker (Wayne). As we already know, Lincoln was also considered to be those two things as well. Both Emerson and Lincoln, and even Thoreau also had basically if not anything else, one thing in common and that was freedom. All of them wanted freedom, the only difference was that Abraham Lincoln wanted that for the whole county and not just individually.
This is just a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact, but I think that they probably spoke very differently in their speeches and things as well. From all that I have read, Lincoln just seems to have a very different personality from Thoreau or Emerson. For example, unlike Lincoln, Thoreau would just say that he was against things, rather than accepting that the problem was there and trying to fix it (Wayne). which is sort of what Lincoln did. He would try and fix them. Other than these little things that made them different, I think that really they stood for a lot of the same things. Another thing that they had in common, was their view on common sense. "But, in a larger sense,..." (Lincoln).




Lincoln, Abraham. "The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln." NetINS Showcase. Web. 04 Feb. 2012.



Wayne, Tiffany K., ed. "Emerson, Ralph Waldo." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.