Rhetorical analysis example: a full essay and how to write your own

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 battle-field 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.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

By November 1863 the Union had won at Gettysburg, but the war was far from over, and the new cemetery held men who had died there in July. Edward Everett, the day’s main speaker, had already given a two-hour oration on the battle. Lincoln, invited only to add “a few appropriate remarks,” spoke for about two minutes, and in that space he does something a dedication speech is not expected to do: he declares the ceremony inadequate. By framing the nation’s history as a life still at risk, refusing to let the gathering dedicate the ground, and redirecting the act of dedication to his listeners, Lincoln turns a memorial for the dead into a commitment demanded of the living.

Lincoln builds his argument on a timeline. The first sentence looks back “four score and seven years,” to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution, and it describes the nation in the language of birth: “brought forth,” “conceived in Liberty.” The second paragraph moves to the present, a war “testing whether that nation … can long endure,” and the last reaches into the future, toward “a new birth of freedom” or a government that might “perish from the earth.” The speech tells the life story of a nation that could still die. For an audience standing among fresh graves, the metaphor does quiet work: the soldiers’ deaths become part of a larger life their survivors can still save. Dating the nation from the Declaration also makes its “proposition that all men are created equal” the thing on trial, not merely the survival of the Union.

The speech turns on a refusal. Having called the dedication “altogether fitting and proper,” Lincoln reverses himself: “we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.” Each verb is more sacred than the last, and each is denied. The soldiers, he says, have already consecrated the field “far above our poor power to add or detract.” Then comes the contrast at the center of the address: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” Setting saying against doing, and “we” against “they,” Lincoln ranks the speakers, himself included, below the dead. It is an unusual move for a president at a public ceremony, and it builds his credibility through modesty: a speaker who insists his words do not matter is hard to accuse of using the dead for political ends. The prediction turned out to be wrong, which is part of the speech’s afterlife but not of its strategy.

Having emptied the ceremony of its usual purpose, Lincoln gives it a new one. The word “dedicate” returns, but now its object is the audience: “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work.” The speech uses “here” eight times and some form of “dedicate” six, so the place and the act stay fixed while their meaning moves from the cemetery to the crowd. The final sentence is long and suspended, a chain of clauses set off by dashes, each one a pledge: increased devotion, a resolve “that these dead shall not have died in vain,” “a new birth of freedom.” It ends on a triad that sets the stakes above the war itself: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Lincoln never names Gettysburg, the Confederacy, slavery or the Union, and there is no “I” in the speech at all, only “we,” “us” and “our.” That restraint lets every listener, and every later reader, find a place inside the promise.

A dedication speech is expected to honor the dead and console the living. Lincoln’s honors the dead by insisting that words cannot, and consoles the living by giving them a task. In about 270 words he reframes the war around a founding promise of equality and asks his audience to finish what the soldiers began. The address works less as a eulogy than as a vow, and its brevity is part of the argument: having said that what is said here matters little, Lincoln stops talking.

Douglass’s sharpest tool is the possessive pronoun. Early in the speech he praises the founders as “statesmen, patriots and heroes,” but he calls them “your fathers,” a distinction the audience could hear without alarm. Then he asks, “why am I called upon to speak here to-day?” and the distinction becomes the argument: “This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” The balanced clauses put speaker and audience on opposite sides of the same holiday, and the short sentences, after long periodic ones, land like a verdict. Because he has already honored the founders, the audience cannot dismiss him as hostile to their history, so the pronoun shift wounds rather than merely offends. He even names his method, saying the moment calls for “scorching irony, not convincing argument.” His reason is in the text: the moral case is already conceded (“Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already”), so what the nation needs is not proof but shame.

Kennedy’s address leans on reversal. “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate” repeats the same words in swapped order, and the swap carries the policy: firmness and openness in one breath, in a speech that addresses “old allies” and “those nations who would make themselves our adversary” alike. The best-known line uses the same pattern to reassign responsibility: “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” The command form and the old-fashioned word order lend it the weight of ceremony, and the symmetry makes it easy to remember and repeat. The device is doing political work. It turns a new president’s promises into the audience’s obligations.

Weak: In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln uses ethos, pathos and logos to persuade his audience.
True of nearly every speech. It names categories, not choices, and gives no purpose.

Better: Lincoln uses repetition, contrast and imagery to honor the soldiers who died at Gettysburg.
Names real choices, but the purpose is just the occasion, and there is no claim about effect.

Strong: By framing the nation’s history as a life still at risk, refusing to let the ceremony dedicate the ground, and redirecting dedication to his listeners, Lincoln turns a memorial for the dead into a commitment demanded of the living.
Specific strategies, in order, tied to a purpose and an effect that someone could dispute.