When I finally actually paid attention to what was being said in the Gettysburg address, I realized the massive level of chutzpah required to make the Declaration of Independence about *STOPPING* independence.
Lincoln absolutely flipped the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, and his double talk should meet the envy of any conman in history.
To make the thing about the very opposite of what it was, is a level of deception that should put him in the record books as world's greatest liar!
For awhile I thought I was the only one who noticed that his speech was about stopping an effort to gain independence, but I found out later that others have noticed the same thing. One of the best write ups i've seen on the topic was by H.L. Mencken.
"But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege."
Did the slaves govern themselves?
How many of the States in the CSA were free-states?