Lincoln at Gettysburg The Word. This item is unavailable.Lincoln at Gettysburg The Word

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1993, this is an account of the making of Lincoln's revolutionary masterpiece. Lincoln was asked to prepare a memorial for the battle at Gettysburg. Instead, he gave the whole nation "a birth of freedom" - by tracing its birth to the Declaration of Independence (which called all men equal) rather than the Constitution (which tolerated slavery). In the space of a mere 272 words, Lincoln combines the rhetoric of the Greek Revival and the categories of Transcendentalism, to provide stunning imagery of the Rural Cemetery Movement. His entire previous life and training, his deep political experience, went into this, his masterpiece.

Garry Wills, former Henry R. Luce Professor of American Culture and Public Policy at Northwestern University, is the author of Inventing America and Explaining America, as well as Reagan's America, Under God, Nixon Agonistes, The Kennedy Imprisonment, and other books. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.