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The Words That Remade America

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The Words That Remade America
“The Words that Remade America”

Abraham Lincoln, according to Garry Wills, was a powerful and inspiring historical figure, whose words will forever remain a tribute to all the lives lost in the Civil War. The Gettysburg Address had a monumental impact on the United States of America as a whole. From “The Words that Remade America,” one can infer the author’s main thesis was that Abraham Lincoln’s speech on November 19, 1863, changed the way America viewed itself as a nation. The Gettysburg Address initiated America’s uniting as “a single people dedicated to a proposition.”
From the Gettysburg Address came a new literary style, or a new way of writing. Observers of Lincoln’s speech concluded that his eloquence further encouraged other great writers such as Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. Lincoln was always working to improve his writing, and wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfection. According to the article, he often used rhetoric devices, like repeating the antecedent as often as possible, to hook the listener. Lincoln’s way of writing was “the perfect medium for changing the way most Americans thought about the nation’s founding.” Abraham Lincoln also depicted the Declaration of Independence as being predominantly about equality. His main goal was to preserve the union, and, ultimately, to unify America as one. Lincoln redirected people’s thoughts about the Constitution to more positive ones. From the Gettysburg Address, Americans came to the realization that the United States were not single states, but a unified nation. Just as it said in “The Words that Remade America,” after the Gettysburg Address, the United States became a singular noun; “The United States is a free country,” rather than a plural noun; “The United States are a free

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