Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous and well known speeches of Abraham Lincoln and of all time.  It was considered so important that I was required to memorize it in eighth grade.  I remember most of it or at least bits and pieces all the time.  When I was learning it though, I remember, for some reason, always reciting it in an auctioneers tone of voice and going really fast.  I guess I did that because I knew the speech really well and wanted to show off my skills to whoever was willing to listen.

When reading through some other peoples blogs as I always do before writing mine to see if they had anything that I agreed with or forgot about, I came across something in Ben's blog.  Ben brought up a good point about how Thoreau basically hated the government and pretty much despised every move they made (Civil Disobedience) unlike Abraham Lincoln in his speech at the place where The Battle of Gettysburg took place, was the government and was proud of our nation (Gettysburg Address).  His speech also talks about the pro's of our nation.  I just found it interesting and ironic that Thoreau and Lincoln were complete opposites in their view of our government.

If me and Kirsten were choosing out of a group of people we should interview for our project that liked Emerson and Thoreau and agreed with their views on life and government, Abraham Lincoln would not be a good candidate.  Although, I think that I want to use him as one of the people that we interview not only because I want to dress up and wear a beard and hat, but because he was a well respected man and his thoughts on life and Thoreau would probably be very interesting.  He most likely didn't like the man because they couldn't agree on anything, but his thoughts on Emerson and Thoreau's views could strike a good debate.

Lincoln, Abraham. "The Gettysburg Address." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 400-402. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.