Speaker

“The Gettysburg Address” was delivered by US President Abraham Lincoln. At the time of the speech, Lincoln had been in office for two years, and his term was marked by the unfolding of the “great civil war” he mentions in the speech.

A self-taught lawyer, Lincoln had also served as a Whig Party leader and a congressman and he later founded the Republican Party in the US.  He won the presidential elections on an abolitionist platform (promising to attempt to abolish slavery in the US), which prompted seven US states to secede (separate themselves from the North and the Union) and start the American Civil War.

The Republican Party Lincoln helped form was originally guided by principles such as abolitionism, an expansive foreign policy, and a pro-business o...