What Lincoln Got Wrong in the Gettysburg Address

David J. Kent

Washington, DC

Thursday, January 15, 2026

The Gettysburg Address is Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech. In 272 words delivered in slightly over two minutes, Lincoln set the tone for the remaining years of the war and steered us to a new birth of freedom. But in another sense, Lincoln made a major error.

Most know the opening line:

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.

The "four score and seven years" takes us back to 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. That certainly is factual. But is the rest of the sentence accurate?

Not really, it turns out. First of all, the fathers, that is, those who spearheaded the break with Britain to create what is now the United States, didn't actually bring forth a new nation. What they brought forth was independence from Britain, but as the Declaration states, "these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States." Not "a new nation," but free and independent states.

Indeed, the first Continental Congress jumped right into writing our first constitution, called the Articles of Confederation. Those articles, adopted in 1777, created a state-based framework that had similarities to what the Confederacy created in 1861. Many of the states, particularly South Carolina and Georgia, the two states most dependent even then on slave labor, abhorred the idea of a strong national government, especially one with a national military force that might forcibly end slavery (hence why we initially relied on state militia). To many, the concept of "union" was temporary, just long enough to get through the war of independence, and then it was back to running things at the state level.

So, Lincoln fudged that part a bit. In his defense, the Articles of Confederation system was an unmitigated disaster, as many states proved irresponsible and self-serving to the point of making the whole federal protection from foreign invaders, not to mention providing basic services, impossible. By 1887 this was painfully obvious, which is why we scrapped the Articles of Confederation and created an entirely new system of government in what we know as the U.S. Constitution.

Lincoln's assertion that what eventually became the nation was "conceived in liberty" is also somewhat questionable. The founders certainly conceived the idea of liberty from Britain, but in practice, there were many who did not gain liberty, most notably African Americans, Native Americans, and women. But the new system was supposed to get everyone to buy into a new and workable government with a framework by which issues could be discussed and resolved. Slavery was still a massive problem - and would get worse in the lead-up to the Civil War - but it was relegated to the States to work out how to get rid of it. Each of the northern states managed that, but the southern states instead grew the institution.

Which leaves the final piece of Lincoln's first sentence: "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Here again, the veracity of this at the time was not true in practice. Lincoln treated that part of the Declaration as aspirational, a proposition, that is, a principle that must be proven through action. We hadn't reached that point by the time of the Civil War, nor, arguably, in the present day. It was an ideal that we must continue to strive for to create a more perfect Union.

How much of this Lincoln understood at the time is debatable. Let's debate.

David J. Kent is Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and author of Lincoln in New England: In Search of His Forgotten Tours.

Image: Hay copy of the Gettysburg Address, public domain, Wikimedia Commons