SOL Review US History
7c
Emancipation Proclamation
Made the destruction of slavery a Northern war aim- a political goal. Discouraged any
interference of foreign governments- as France and Britain were opposed to slavery- they would not assist the Confederacy (foreign policy)
Gettysburg Address
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address said the United States was one nation, not a federation of independent states. That was what the Civil War was about for Lincoln: to preserve the Union as a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Lincoln described the Civil War as a struggle to preserve a nation that was dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal" and that was ruled by a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Lincoln believed America was "one nation," not a collection of sovereign states. Southerners believed that states had freely joined the union and could freely leave.
Main Idea
Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address
Emancipation Proclamation
By: Calli Walker
Frequently Asked Questions
How did the ideas expressed in the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address support the North’s war aims?
What was Lincoln’s vision of the American nation as professed in the Gettysburg Address?
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln believed the Civil War was fought to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of
Independence and was a "Second American Revolution." He described a different vision
for the United States from the one that had prevailed from the beginning of the Republic to the Civil War.
Overall Content
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 here on a great battlefield of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly
carried on. 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 here gave the last full measure of
devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died
in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.