Gettysburg Address

[maharba]

Continuing the Gettysburg Address line by line,
"our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation"

I think it would have sounded better "our forefathers". If he intended it to mean our 'fathers' as in participant founders with a part in the secession from england, then the fathers of President Davis and General Lee certainly qualified. But not Lincoln's father. At school recitals I have often heard kids to say "our forefathers", and it seems a more natural fit to me, anyway.

The "upon this continent" phrasing seems clunky and almost legalistic. I think he was lifting terms from the 1861 Galusha Grow speech, and so he kept in that 'continent' reference. But "a new nation" was not created, then. As again, from Grow's speech, "a new empire". 'On these shores' would certainly have been more poetic, and less derivative back to Speaker Grow's vision.