Abraham Lincolns Speeches?

Question:Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1861),
the Emancipation Proclamation (1863),
the Gettysburg Address (1863),
and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865).

Exactly when, and why were these speeches spoken? And if you know...what did each of them mean?

I'm kinda curious cause we did a lesson at school but the trimester ended before we finished and it made me quite curious about them.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1861),
the Emancipation Proclamation (1863),
the Gettysburg Address (1863),
and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865).

Exactly when, and why were these speeches spoken? And if you know...what did each of them mean?

I'm kinda curious cause we did a lesson at school but the trimester ended before we finished and it made me quite curious about them.

~Why?

The inaugural addresses were given because incoming Presidents traditionally give a speech when they take office. Lincoln followed tradition. He gave both in Washington DC. If you bother to read them, the language is quite simple and understandable and his meaning was clear to the uneducated
masses of the day, so you should be able to figure it out. If you don't want to read them, I won't tell you what he said.

The Gettysburg address was ostensibly given to dedicate the national cemetery at Gettysburg where the dead of the battle were interred. As a practical matter, it was given because Lincoln was desperate to drum up support to continue the war and he was worried about his waning prospects of being reelected in '64. It was as much a campaign appearance as anything. It was given at, duh, Gettysburg, PA. [That might be why it is known as the Gettysburg address - it would have made very little sense to call it the "Antietam Address".] Problem is, if one evaluates the speech, one finds two glaring errors. He starts with "Four score and seven years ago ....." That would take one back to 1776. The USA was born in 1789 with the ratification and implementation of the Constitution, not with the Lee Resolution of July 2, 1776 (which is the resolution by which the Second Continental Congress purported to declare colonial independence - except Rhode Island who had already ratified its own declaration of independence on May 4, 1776). The colonies became independent as a matter of British and international law only when they were granted independence by Great Britain in 1783 by the Treaty of Versailles. Lincoln's arithmetic or his basic understanding of international law was flawed. He concludes with the part about insuring that "government of the people, by the people, for the people" not perishing. But each of the Confederate States seceded as a result of the majority vote of the elected representatives of the state legislatures and the Ordinances of Secession were then overwhelmingly ratified by a majority of the citizens at the polls. Secession was not constitutionally prohibited, thus was a power constitutionally reserved to the states. (The New England states must have agreed with that basic concept since they had threatened to secede in 1803 and then again in 1812-1814.) Since the states had the right to secede and did so by full and fair democratic process, since the Confederacy and each of the Confederate states was a democracy with constitutions almost identical to the US constitution and since the Federal government was trampling the will of all of those people and those states under the tyrannical military boot of the "Union", just who was Lincoln praising? The soldiers of the Confederacy were fighting for the democratic will and the freedom and independence of the people of the sovereign democratic states of the south. The North was fighting to 'preserve the union' against the states who had constitutionally and lawfully left it by democratic process. More than a little hypocrisy in the speech, wouldn't you say? Still, it is a masterpiece of rhetoric and eloquence.

The Emancipation Proclamation was not a speech. It was an unconstitutional exercise of presidential power. Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, acknowledged the constitutionality of slavery and his inability to legally do anything about it. In 1863, he decided to follow the example of Congress, who had passed legislation months earlier that attempted to do the same thing he purported to do in the EP, and he claimed he had the right to do it as a military matter via his power as Commander-in-Chief. Saying he had the authority didn't make it so. Slave ownership was a protected right under the US Constitution. Neither the president, as Chief Executive or as Commander-in-Chief, nor Congress has or had the right to ignore the Constitution. In fact, all members of Congress and the President took (take) an oath to uphold and protect the constitution. The Federal government cannot take private property (the slaves) without due process of law and just compensation to the owners. Slaavery could be abolished only by constitutional amendment. The EP was proclaimed by Lincoln (and the slaves of the areas in rebellion were "freed" by the Second Confiscation Act) as a military matter, intended to cripple the southern economy and to create chaos by freeing millions of uneducated, homeless and unemployable slaves who had no no money, nowhere to live, no job skills and no place to go. It was not intended as a moral or humanitarian gesture. (Read the background of the Second Confiscation Act for further detail of the real purpose and intent of both the Act and the later EP). No one challenged Lincoln or Congress in Court on the EP or the Act, so the Supreme Court never had the opportunity to address the constitutionality of either, but that doesn't change the fact that both were illegal and unconstitutional.

Education isn't about listening to what a teacher has to say. The obligation is on the student to learn, not on the teacher to teach. If you really are interested, you would look these things up on your own. If you had the gumption or inclination, or had had any teacher who had inspired you to want to learn, you would want to find and review the material and you would be able to analyze that material and come up with the conclusions I have stated here, especially as regards the obvious errors in the Gettysburg Address and the illegality of the Emancipation Proclamation. My students call that process "learning" and "thinking" and fun. Join them. Please. "As die learning and the quest for truth, so die liberty and freedom."

I'll do the gettysburg address and emancipation proc. the gettysburg address was spoken at gettysburg battle field (PA) and bascially it said the world will forget what we said (there were many speakers that day) but no one will forget who fought here and why. And we'll get through this war, its bad now but afterwards we'll be stronger and better for it. At gettysburg nearly 50,000 died in about a 3 day battle.
eman. those slaves in rebellious states (confederate states that formed their own country) are now free! Sadly it didn't free a slave because the Union had no authority in the rebell state.