“Lincoln’s remarks anticipated the shift to vernacular rhythms which Mark Twain would complete twenty years later. Hemingway claimed that all modern American novels are the offspring of Huckleberry Finn. It is no greater exaggeration to say that all modern political prose descends from the Gettysburg Address …” Historian Garry Wills on the significance of the words that remade America. (“…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Drops mic.)