![]() ![]() No wonder, then, how many of these speeches start with reference to anniversaries and go on to refer to each other. "All modern political prose," Wills argues, "descends from the Gettysburg address." In his definitive study of Lincoln at Gettysburg, the American scholar Garry Wills points out that the address not only followed Everett's sprawling oration, but supplanted it with a new, plain style of delivery that was to dominate American public speaking from then till now. Nonetheless, they share much more than divides them: in style, reference, technique, subject and inspiration. There is, I want to argue, a crucial difference between the content and therefore the rhetorical method of Obama's speeches and the rest. Jackson had lost the democratic nomination, Obama had won the election. Roosevelt's inaugural was given in the depths of the depression, Kennedy's at the height of the cold war. ![]() The King speech was delivered at a rally in support of civil rights. The Gettysburg address (all 272 words of it) followed a two-hour eulogy by Edward Everett, the president of Harvard, celebrating a key civil war victory. These speeches were delivered at different lengths, on different occasions and under different circumstances. ![]()
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