The Gettysburg Address (2018)

Through interviews, period photographs, and archival audio and video, The Gettysburg Address traces the literary, political, and spiritual influences for Abraham Lincoln's historic speech—from Shakespearean cadences and biblical imagery rooted in the King James Bible, to the nationalistic oratory of American statesman Daniel Webster and the ideological stylings of reforming Boston minister Theodore Parker. Civil War soldier sacrifice and Lincoln's personal sufferings are also examined as additional influences for the speech, as well as the Victorian romanticism of death which prompted the rural cemetery movement and provided the inspiration for landscape architect William Saunders' design of the new cemetery in Gettysburg where Lincoln delivered the speech.