Lincoln began the address:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.”
Lincoln was saying his troops were fighting a war because all men are created equal. In the context of the times - Dred Scott, Uncle Tom's Cabin, John Brown, Emancipation Proclamation - Lincoln was saying the North was fighting for equality but the South was not.
For those who believed Lincoln's earlier assertions that his troops were fighting to preserve the union, it came as a shock to realize Lincoln was now claiming the federal dead were for the purpose of making voters, jurors, citizens, legislators and PTA leaders of the “merciless Indian Savages” and those bound to service.
And listeners were left to ponder: How much of the Gettysburg text was a pretext for something else? And how long would the pretext survive after there was no longer a need for pretext?
That is without a doubt the most idiotic analysis of the Gettysburg Address I’ve ever seen. Congratulations.