from "Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865" and "The Gettysburg Address" - Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's speeches, The Second Inaugural from March 4, 1865 and The Gettysburg Address are some of the most famous speeches of all time. They would fall underneath of the writing genre of realism. According to Werlock, "Realism is the attempt to depict life as it actually exists, not as the author wants it to be in the present or the future, or imagines it was in the past. A realist carefully chooses details that illustrate this vision, unlike the naturalist who tries to include all possible details" (Werlock). This is just what Lincoln does within his speeches. This Illinois man does not cut out anything about the nation, he tells it as it is. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any other nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure....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" (Lincoln, "The Gettysburg" 402). He does kind of romanticize the whole idea of rebuilding the world after the war, but he mainly does not. He talks of how this war has split the country in two. He talks of the people who have risked and many times given their lives for the sake of the war, and if this war does not come to anything, it would be a waste of their lives. He is not leaving anything out. He tells us of how the nation is at this point in time.

These speeches relate directly to the time period because they are legitimate speeches from the time around the Civil War, and in the Civil War. So these speeches are very relevant to the time period. Lincoln is kind of telling us the state the nation is in and what we need to do to make it the nation it is capable to be. There is a little bit of religion in these speeches. In the "from Second Inaugural Address, March 4th, 1865," there are a couple of mentions of God, "The Almighty has his own purposes...in the providence of God....having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove and that He gives us both North and South.....Yet, if God wills that it continue....with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right..." (Lincoln, "from Second" 339). This speech is kind of centered upon what God wants the country to do at this time. A lot of it is focused upon this. In "The Gettysburg Address," there is not mention of God; at least in this excerpt there is not. This is a big part of the government as well because it is the President of a government and it states what the country he is governing should do. The American Dream in these speeches would be to have the Civil War ended and having the nation be one Union again; brothers not fighting against brothers.

The hero of "The Gettysburg Address" would be the soldiers in the war; "The brave men, living and dead" (Lincoln, "The Gettysburg" 402). These soldiers are common people that are fighting for what is they believe is right. These are commonly the heroes of realism as well.



Kasraie, Mary Rose. "local color." In Barney, Brett, and Lisa Paddock, eds. Encyclopedia of American Literature: The Age of Romanticism and Realism, 1816–1895, vol. 2, Revised Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Feb 8, 2011.


Lincoln, Abraham. "Lincoln, Abraham."The Gettysburg Address." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus; McGraw-Hill, 2010. 402. Print.


Lincoln, Abraham."from Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus; McGraw-Hill, 2010. 339. Print.


Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Feb 8, 2011.